APPRAISEMENTS 

AND  ASPERITIES 

JS  TO  SOME  CONTEMPORARY  WRITERS 
FELIX  E.  SCHELLING,  Ph.D,  LL.D. 


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OF  CALIFORNIA 

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APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 


APPRAISEMENTS   AND 
ASPERITIES 

AS  TO  SOME  CONTEMPORARY  WRITERS 


BY 

FELIX  E.  SCHELLING 

PROFESSOR  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE   IN  THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF  PENNSYLVANIA 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LONDON 
J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

1922 


COPYRIGHT,   1922,  BY  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 


PRINTED  BY  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

AT  THE  WASHINGTON  SQUARE  PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA,  U.  S.  A. 


Library 

Pll 


The  following  articles  first  appeared 
in  the  columns  of  The  Evening  Public 
Ledger  of  Philadelphia  to  the  proprie- 
tors of  which  I  am  indebted  for  per- 
mission to  reprint  them.  Of  the  two 
chief  words  constituting  the  title,  the 
first  is  far  the  more  important;  for  it 
is  better  humbly  to  ascertain  what  a 
book  is  than  to  fall  into  asperities 
about  it.  Every  review  is  an  expres- 
sion of  opinion:  that  this  opinion  be 
honestly  arrived  at,  is  all  that  we  can 
demand.  Our  range  here  is  over  the 
fields  of  poetry,  fiction,  the  essay  and 
the  drama,  with  single  excursions  into 
biography,  anthropology,  philosophy 
and  education.  Where  each  subject 
stands  by  itself,  classification  is  im- 
possible. The  order  therefore  is  more 
or  less  haphazard. 


Ilh2l 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The  Familiar  Essay 9 

"  Pkrsonal  Prejudicks" 15 

Our  Miss  Repplier 21 

One  of  the  Three  Graces 27 

The  Quaintness  of  Mr.  Croihkrs 33 

The  Terrible  Mr.  Goldring 39 

The  Man  of  the  Happy  Mean 45 

"The  Art  of  Biography" 50 

"Potterism" 56 

Joseph  Conrad  on  Life  and  Letters 62 

TllEOPHRASTUS      IN      KaNSAS 6/ 

Carl  Sandburg — Rebel.'' 73 

Alfred  Noyes  and  a  Great  Poimc  Tradition 79 

John  Masefieid  and  the  Key  Poetic 85 

An  Old  Myth  Revitalized 91 

The  Poetry  of  George  E.  Woodberky 96 

As  TO  American  Drama loi 

Mr.  Drinkwater's  "Mary  Stuart" 108 

New  Music  on  the  Eternal  Triangli: 114 

"The  Greatest  Play  since  Shakespeare"   120 

Guitry's  "Deburau" 126 

A  Trenchant  Satire  on  the  War 131 

No  Improvement  on  Victor  Hugo 138 

"The  Emperor  Jones" 144 

The  Stage  from  Betterton  to  Living 150 

Another  Volume  of  "Sherburne  Essays" 157 

A  Sound  British  Critic 163 

Some  Forgotten  Tales  of  Henry  James 169 

The  Veritable  Queen  of  English  Fiction 175 

The  New  Stone  Age 181 

A  Breath  of  Fresh  Air  on  Education 187 

Professor  Santa yanna  on  American  Opinion 193 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND 
ASPERITIES 

THE  FAMILIAR  ESSAY 

"  T  HAVE  read  with  delight  the  advance  sheets 
X  of  'Adventures  and  Enthusiasms, '  by  E.  V. 
Lucas. "  So  wrote  A.  Edward  Newton  to  a  num- 
ber of  his  friends  before  his  recent  departure  to 
London,  Johnson  hunting — Dr.  Samuel,  dear 
reader,  immersed  in  contemporary  politics,  not 
Hiram — and  Mr.  Newton  added:  "It  is  one  of 
the  most  charming  volumes  of  essays  I  have 
read  in  a  long  time. "  Even  those  of  us  who 
have  a  less  perfect  discernment  for  these  delicate 
niceties  of  style  and  sentiment  must  appreciate 
the  justice  of  this  verdict  of  the  pundit  and  add 
our  less  authoritative  praise  when  Mr.  Lucas  has 
once  made  us  his;  and  some  of  us  have  been  such 
long  since,  from  the  time  of  our  reading  in  his 
edition  of  the  "Works  and  Letters  of  Charles 
and  Mary  Lamb,"  and  from  other  pleasing  vol- 
umes of  his  essays  and  collections  in  which  good 
taste  combines  with  scholarly  judgment  to  bid 
the  reader  to  the  feast. 

9 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

It  is  said  that  publishers  shy  at  the  word 
"essay;"  but  then  publishers  are  a  skittish  tribe 
and  shy  easily.  Certainly  many  a  title  tries  to 
conceal  or  evade  that  dangerous  word.  I  notice 
that  Mr.  Crothers'  new  volume  is  to  be  called 
"The  Dame's  School  Experience  and  Other 
Sketches,"  this  last  word  borrowed  from  the 
artists.  Another  evasion  is  "papers,"  abstracted 
from  the  lawyers.  Indeed,  this  question  of 
"What's  in  a  name.''"  is  not  unimportant  in  be- 
guiling the  would-be  reader  and  purchaser.  Nor 
is  he  altogether  wrong  as  to  "essay,"  that 
sometime  modest  and  deferential  word,  in  which 
the  humble  writer  asks  you  to  receive  these,  his 
efforts,  his  attempts,  not  expecting  too  much. 
But  this  significance  has  long  since  evaporated 
into  thin  air,  and  an  essay  conveys  to  the  un- 
initiated— and  to  the  initiated  now  as  well — the 
sense  of  a  something  dry,  solid,  lengthy  and  not 
to  be  trifled  with.  Mr.  Lucas  is  happy  in  his 
title.  We  have  all  of  us  had  adventures  and  un- 
fortunate is  he  who  has  outlived  his  enthusiasms. 

The  essay  is  a  delicacy  for  the  aristocrat,  the 
Brahmin  among  readers.  Children  and  those  in 
whom  childhood  is  prolonged  read  for  the  story; 
and  the  "preternaturally  good"  read  for  edi- 
fication, which,  for  the  most  part,  they  are  sadly 
in  need  of.  Practical  people  read  for  facts,  al- 
though they  may  never  arrive  at  a  point  at  which 

10 


THE  FAMILIAR  ESSAY 

they  actually  recognize  a  fact  when  they  meet 
one.  And  the  romantic  read  impossible  fiction 
or  aureate  poetry  and  lose  themselves  in  un- 
reality. I  repeat  that  he  who  loves  the  essay — 
especially  the  familiar  essay,  as  it  is  called — and 
letters,  is  the  aristocrat,  the  Brahmin  among 
readers,  because  he,  above  all  others,  has  the 
taste  of  the  connoisseur  for  delicate  flavor,  for 
fragrance,  for  aroma,  that  spirit  which  gives  to 
our  best  essays  a  quality  above  the  posturings  of 
dramatists  and  novelists  and  the  flutterings  of 
poets,  be  they  free  or  caged  in  verse. 

After  a  reading  of  Mr.  Lucas's  "Adventures 
and  Enthusiasms"  I  asked  myself:  What  is 
there  in  these  little  chats  on  subjects  (many  of 
them,  stern  moralist,  really  trivial)  that  gives 
me,  the  reader,  such  an  unalloyed  pleasure.^  I 
cannot  say  that  I  have  learned  very  much — • 
something  about  the  Man  of  Ross  and  Leach, 
the  illustrator  of  Punch;  the  possible  origin  of 
that  marine  successor  to  old  Father  Neptune, 
Davy  Jones  and  his  renowned  locker;  the  cir- 
cumstance that  the  nautical  descendants  of  Sir 
Francis  Drake  are  still  playing  at  bowls  on  the 
identical  bowling  green  back  of  the  Hoe  at  Ply- 
mouth (England,  of  course,  we  have  no  Hoes), 
on  which  Sir  Francis  was  surprised  while  at 
his  game  with  the  news  of  the  coming  of  the 
Spanish  Armada.    These  are  some  of  the  curious 

II 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

bits  of  information  that  remain,  together  with  a 
few  stories,  not  always  quite  so  good  as  admir- 
ably well  told.  Even  a  recurrence  to  the  list  of 
contents,  with  my  reading  fresh  in  mind,  does 
not  seem  much  to  help.  "The  Sparrows' 
Friend",  "A  Morning  Call",  "The  Perfect 
Guest",  "A  Devonshire  Inn"  and  the  agreeable 
London  rambles  to  Greenwich,  Windsor,  the 
Zoological  Gardens,  Kew,  places  to  which  we  all 
go  when  in  London:  well,  now,  what  is  it  that  he 
has  just  been  saying  so  agreeably  about  these 
old  haunts  of  yours  and  mine.''  And  that  un- 
tenacious  memory  of  the  modern  reader  gives  me 
no  very  definite  answer.  What  it  does  give  me 
is  the  general  recollection  of  a  very  pleasant 
hour  or  two  in  exceedingly  good  company,  and 
that,  I  cannot  but  think,  is  the  fulfilment  of  the 
very  beau  ideal  of  the  familiar  essay. 

It  is  always  interesting,  however  at  times 
disappointing,  to  meet  the  people  w^iose  books 
one  has  read.  What  would  not  some  of  us,  who 
still  harbor  enthusiasms,  as  docs  Mr.  Lucas, 
give  to  have  met — not  Dr.  Johnson,  he  w^as  not 
meetable,  you  went  to  him  as  to  a  sovereign 
loftily  enthroned.  No,  decidedly  not  Dr.  John- 
son, nor  the  great  Mr.  Burke;  but  Oliver  Gold- 
smith, in  his  peach-colored  plush  suit — old  Noll 
was  no  beauty — or  Dick  Steele,  when  his  cups 
had  made  him  maudlin,  and  lie  was  penning  a 

12 


THE  FAMILIAR  ESSAY 

letter  to  "his  dearest  Prue, "  to  deprecate  a 
caudle  lecture.  What  it  would  have  been  to 
have  sat  quietly  in  a  corner  when  Coleridge 
asked  Lamb,  "Charles,  have  you  ever  heard  me 
preach"?  And  Charles  stuttering  reply,  "Sam- 
Sam-u-u-el,  I  have  never  heard  you  do  any- 
thing else." 

The  familiar  essay  makes  one  familiar.  Not 
many  months  ago  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting 
Mr.  Lucas  and  sitting  beside  him  for  a  while.  I 
can  testify  to  the  truth  of  his  statement  that  he 
is  a  very  good  listener;  for  that  day  he  listened  to 
many  of  us,  but  repaid  the  multiplicity  of  our 
converse  in  the  quality  of  his  minor  part  in  the 
conversation.  I  find  that  I  cannot  remember  a 
single  one  of  his  many  happy  remarks,  much  less 
record  the  color  of  his  eyes  or,  if  he  will  pardon 
me  the  liberty,  the  plenty  or  paucity  of  his  hair. 
I  might  guess  at  his  age.  His  dress  made  no 
impression  upon  me.  He  was  inconspicuously 
the  gentleman,  the  polite  man  of  the  world,  and 
I  would  recognize  him  in  a  minute  should  I  be  so 
happy  as  again  to  meet  him.  What  I  took  away 
with  me  was  the  recollection  of  a  very  pleasant 
hour  in  exceedingly  good  company.  The  man 
here  tallies  precisely  with  his  work. 

Now  this,  it  seems  to  me,  is  exactly  the  se- 
cret of  the  familiar  essay  and  the  reason  why  it  is 
beloved  of  the  aristocrat  in  reading,   the  Brah- 

13 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

min  aforesaid.  Personality  counts  big  no  matter 
in  what  walk  in  life;  but  mere  personality  is  not 
enough  in  the  familiar  essay.  Somebody  said 
something  once  about  the  Johnsonian  manner  to 
the  effect  that  were  Dr.  Johnson  to  cause  min- 
nows to  speak  he  would  give  them  the  utterance 
of  whales  or  leviathans.  A  familiar  essay  is  not 
an  authoritative  discourse,  emphasizing  the  in- 
feriority of  the  reader;  and  neither  the  learned, 
the  superior,  the  clever  nor  overwitty,  is  the 
man  who  can  "pull  it  off."  An  exhibition  of 
pyrotechnics  is  all  very  fine;  but  a  chat  by  a 
wood  fire  with  a  friend  who  can  listen,  as  well  as 
talk,  who  can  even  sit  with  you  by  the  hour  in 
congenial  silence — this  is  better.  When,  there- 
fore, we  find  a  writer  who  chats  with  us  familiarly 
about  the  little  things  that  in  the  aggregate  go  to 
make  up  our  experience  in  life,  when  he  talks  with 
you,  not  to  show  off,  not  to  set  you  right,  not  to 
argue,  above  all  not  to  preach,  but  to  share  his 
thoughts  and  sentiments,  to  laugh  with  you, 
moralize  a  bit  with  you,  though  not  too  much, 
take  out  of  his  pocket,  so  to  speak,  a  curious 
little  anecdote,  or  run  across  an  odd  little  exper- 
ience and  share  it  pleasantly,  enjoying  it  un- 
affectedly and  anxious  to  have  you  enjoy  it,  too 
— when  we  have  all  this,  we  have  the  daintiest, 
the  purest  and  the  most  delightful  of  all  the 
forms  of  literature — the  familiar  essay. 

H 


"  PERSONAL  PREJUDICES  " 

PERSONAL  PREJUDICES."  Could  there 
be  a  more  perfect,  a  more  fitting  title  for 
a  book  of  essays?  Why,  it  is  as  obvious  and  as 
admirable  as  Columbus'  immortal  solution  of 
the  first  step  to  the  making  of  an  omelet;  for  the 
essay  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  personal,  and  what  is 
so  personal  as  prejudice?  This  is  another  glar- 
ing example  of  that  prevalent  impertinence,  a 
tendency  on  the  part  of  everybody  to  say  our 
good  things  before  we  have  had  a  chance  to  cere- 
brate them.  And  in  this  case  it  is  not  a  mere 
man — one  might  stand  that — but  a  lady,  and 
from  Boston.  The  sex  is  becoming  more  and 
more  addicted  to  this  disconcerting  practice, 
and  this  title  is  far  from  the  only  instance  of  this 
sort  of  thing  in  this  book.  Much  has  been  said 
in  proverb  and  in  fiction  about  woman  as  bound 
to  have  the  last  word.  One  could  put  up  with 
that,  but  it  is  going  a  bit  far  likewise  thus  to 
insist  on  having  the  first  word  as  well. 

For  example  here  is  a  humble  reviewer  who 
has  been  saying  for  years:  "I  never  meet  an 
Englishman  to  whom  I  take  a  particular  fancy 
but  what  he  turns  out  to  be  a  Scotchman  or  an 
Irishman."  And  here  comes  along  a  lady  from 
Boston  who  tells  my  story  In  this  superior  way. 
"An  Englishman  is  never  more  soul-satlsfying 

15 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

than  when  he  is  a  Scotchman. "  Notice  how  the 
subject  is  simplified  by  leaving  out  the  Irishman. 
(English  statesmen  and  New  York  politicians 
take  notice.)  Long  residence  in  an  Irish  city 
like  Boston  would  naturally  suggest  this.  And 
then  the  essayist  goes  on  blithely  to  praise 
Scottish  tact  and  discretion,  the  like  of  which, 
she  tells  us,  she  has  never  met  "outside 
of  a  petticoat,"  finding  in  the  Scotchman's 
hereditary  right  to  this  article  of  apparel  "an 
abbreviated  excuse"  for  these  virtues.  It 
looks  easy  to  do,  but  try  it. 

By  her  own  avowal  in  a  previous  volume 
Mrs.  Sturgis  is  very  entertainingly  a  grand- 
mother; it  needed  not  the  author's  name  nor 
such  an  avowal  to  disclose  her  sex.  Femininity 
is  written  on  every  page  of  "Personal  Preju- 
dices"; or  is  it  that  personal  prejudices  are 
written  on  every  page  of  femininity }  But  "  from 
Boston,  in  Boston,"  rather  troubles  me.  Mrs. 
Sturgis  lives  on  Beacon  street.  To  live  on 
Beacon  street  is  not  exactly  to  hide  one's  light 
under  a  bushel.  Many  true  Bostonians  live  and 
have  lived  on  Beacon  street,  but  does  the  verit- 
able Bostonian  tell  you  so.^  Boston  deals  not 
in  works  of  supererogation.  Still  again,  Mrs. 
Sturgis  alludes  more  than  once  to  her  darling 
Herald.  Transcript  Is  Bostonese  for  the  news- 
paper.     Save   Mohammed,    there    Is    no   other 

i6 


"PERSONAL  PREJUDICES" 

prophet.  And  a  Sunday  edition  of  any  news- 
paper so  littering  the  house  that  an  orderly  ma- 
tron can  never  get  the  leisure  to  go  to  church! 
Does  Boston  refer  to  a  Sunday  paper  or  to  ab- 
stinence from  church-going,  whatever  actual 
practices  may  be?  I  am  even  more  worried  in 
this  matter  of  Bostonian  authenticity  by  an 
avowed  dislike  for  gardens — not  the  dislike,  but 
the  avowal,  by  Mrs.  Sturgis'  unabashed  con- 
fession that  she  does  not  say  "tray"  for  "trait" 
— let  Bryn  Mawr  note — and  by  the  extraordi- 
nary circumstance  that  she  alludes,  even  to  a 
mere  Bolshevist,  as  "my  gentleman  friend," 
an  un-New  England  plethora  of  words  where 
either  "gentleman"  or  "friend"  might  serve, 
each  being  equally  ironic. 

However  there  are  some  characteristics  of 
"Personal  Prejudices"  which,  I  confess,  are  dead 
against  this  agnosticism  of  mine.  There  is  a 
charming  assumption,  referable  to  atmospheric 
conditions  in  Boston,  to  the  effect  that  any  trifle 
well  talked  about  may  make  interesting  conver- 
sation; and  this  assumption  is  abundantly 
proved  in  this  book  in  the  pleasing  process. 
There  is,  once  more,  a  perfect  complaisancy  as 
to  the  superiority  of  inhabitants  of  Boston, even 
as  to  the  conduct  of  policemen — whose  miscon- 
duct has  made  a  Vice  President  for  the  United 
States — and  a  total  oblivion  as  to  whether  the 

17 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

reader  might  be  interested  in  these  parochial 
matters.  And  there  are  straws — Hke  the  spell- 
ing of  "labour"  with  all  the  letters  to  which  it 
can  possibly  be  entitled,  even  in  England — to 
indicate  that  meticulous  nicety  in  spelling  and 
pronunciation  which  no  American  affects  a  day 
to  the  south  or  west  of  Beacon  Hill.  The  un- 
fortunate foreign  "gentleman  friend"  of  so- 
cialistic leanings,  for  example,  is  rallied  on  his 
phonetic  spelling  of  "does";  it  is  only  the  elect — 
and  who  knows  not  where  abide  the  elect — who 
contrive  to  manipulate  the  theta  and  the  sigma 
in  this  necessary  word  in  such  a  wise  as  to  de- 
lude themselves  into  the  belief  that  they  are 
pronouncing  both  of  them. 

But  our  shaft  is  shot  and  if  it  seem  barbed,  be 
it  remembered  that  the  only  way  to  meet  pre- 
judice is  with  prejudice.  Moreover,  Mrs. 
Sturgis  has  a  way  with  her  prejudices  which 
makes  you  wish  that  you  might  share  them,  and 
she  has  sensible  reasons  for  many  of  them  which 
are  convincing  to  such  as  like  to  be  wittily  con- 
vinced. "For  a  woman  to  vote  is  for  her  to 
commit  a  sin."  This  should  be  a  terrible  deter- 
rent to  such  of  the  sex  as  may  be  treading  care- 
lessly to  the  polls.  But  Mrs.  Sturgis  told  us  this 
less  because  of  her  conviction  that  voting  adds 
an  eighth  cardinal  sin  to  the  menaces  of  feminine 
frailty  than   to  create  a  pleasant    dilemma  in 

i8 


"PERSONAL  PREJUDICES" 

which  not  to  obey  the  constitution  and  vote,  if 
you  are  a  woman,  becomes  Hkewise  a  sin.  Where- 
fore: "I  have  no  objection  to  picking  up  the 
loose  ends  and  polishing  up  a  man's  job  when  he 
has  done  his  share,  but  with  all  the  other  things 
I  have  to  do,  I  can  see  no  reason  why  I  should  do 
his  work  as  well  as  mine":  a  point  well  taken. 
Mrs.  Sturgis  has  much  to  say  which  is  sensible 
as  well  as  clever  about  servants,  on  which  topic 
the  prudent  man  will  hold  his  peace — and  suffer. 
A  certain  remark  of  Mrs.  Sturgis  about  Japanese 
servants  should  be  repeated  not  on  the  Pacific 
coast,  lest  it  lead  to  strained  relations  in  the  East. 
On  house  and  home,  on  quality  and  equality  and 
on  differences  and  distinctions  there  are  convic- 
tions and  truths,  as  well  as  buttresses  of  precon- 
ception. Mrs.  Sturgis'  opinions  on  experts, 
building  laws,  ventilation,  positive  versus  neg- 
ative precept,  hospitals  and  "democracy "should 
take  other  women  to  the  polls  to  make  her  mayor 
of  an  even  more  perfect  Boston  than  Boston  is. 
*'There  have  been  class  distinctions  ever  since 
Eve  spanked  Cain  for  unbrotherly  action  to- 
ward Abel"  is  the  statement  of  no  new  truth; 
but  it  is  a  picturesque  way  of  putting  it,  and 
deeply  will  many  share  Mrs.  Sturgis'  indigna- 
tion as  to  the  exclusion  of  such  as  labor  with 
such  brains  as  they  have  from  that  rising  upper 
aristocracy,  "the  working  classes." 

19 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

In  Mrs.  Sturgis'  search  for  a  book  which  we 
are  previleged  to  share  she  turns  up  many  an  old 
friend.  Rollo,  confounded  little  prig;  Henry 
Kingsley,  eclipsed  by  a  more  successful  brother. 
*'The  Heir  of  RedclyflPe";  among  moderns,  Mr. 
Archibald  Marshall,  who,  as  we  knew  him  de- 
lightfully years  ago,  before  fame  claimed  him,  it 
is  pleasant  to  hear  once  more  approved.  Mrs. 
Sturgis  passes  by  De  Morgan  and  Mr.  Hewlett 
with  a  cold  bow;  one  of  them  bores  her — "Mr. 
Hewlett  moves  in  quite  different  circles." 
When  she  reaches  Mr.  Shaw  we  have  only:  "I 
wasted  no  time  over  that  gentleman;  he  is  no 
friend  of  mine."  Naturally  Mrs.  Sturgis  would 
prefer  Anthony  Trollope.  Now  wouldn't  it  be 
nice  if  we  could  only  swap  prejudices  once  in  a 
while  .^  I  have  a  few  choice  ones  that  I  would 
like  to  be  rid  of.  Mrs  Sturgis  might  not  unre- 
luctantly  part  with  some  of  hers;  however,  she 
wears  them  lightly  and  by  way  of  ornament. 
Perhaps  her  chains  and  heirloom  brooches  are  as 
precious  to  her  as  are  our  masculine  scarf  pins 
and  cuif  links  and  some  of  them  as  remotely 
inherited. 


OUR  MISS  REPPLIER 

IF  our  Miss  Repplier  had  been  born  In  Boston 
and,  after  the  inveterate  habit  of  the  true 
Bostonian,  had  refused  to  Hve  anywhere  else, 
how  New  England  would  boast  of  her  as  a  signal 
evidence  of  New  England's  chronic  superiority 
in  letters.  Or,  if  Miss  Repplier  had  not  resisted 
so  contentedly  the  lure  of  "  the  metropolis  "  which 
sweeps  the  arts  and  the  crafts  which  are,  would 
be  and  pretend  to  be,  into  its  golden  maw,  there 
to  extinguish  them,  how  would  New  York  pro- 
claim to  the  world  its  discovery  of  the  alertest, 
the  sanest  and  the  choicest  of  our  American 
essayists?  As  it  is.  Miss  Repplier  has  loyally 
elected  to  reside  in  Philadelphia  and  in  conse- 
quence we  take  her  as  a  matter  of  course.  Ours 
is  much  the  attitude  of  the  father  of  Macaulay. 
Told  that  his  son  had  carried  off  all  the  honors  at 
Cambridge,  he  modestly  replied:  "That  is  pre- 
cisely what  was  to  be  expected  of  the  son  of 
Zachary  Macaulay."  Told  that  that  son  had 
become  the  foremost  parliamentarian  of  his 
time,  its  greatest  historian  and  essayist,  his  an- 
swer was:  "I  could  expect  no  less."  It  was  not 
in  the  power  of  a  Thomas  Babington  Macaulay 
to  surprise  a  Zachary;  nor  can  a  son  or  a  daugh- 
ter of  Philadelphia  unruffleour  superb  complais- 
ancy — or  is  it  our  supine  indifference.? 

21 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

The  range  and  the  variety  of  the  essay  is 
sometimes  lost  sight  of.  It  may  be  a  chat  over 
a  wood  fire  about  triviahties,  pleasing  and  for- 
gettable. Or  it  may  be  much  else,  and  it  may 
strike  deep  into  the  heart  of  some  matter — I 
detest  the  word  problem — of  momentary  impor- 
tance and,  like  a  searchlight,  strike  back  into  the 
past  of  experience  or  forward  into  the  future  of 
speculation.  Miss  Repplier,  from  the  brilliancy 
of  her  wit  and  her  incomparable  power  of  illum- 
inating whatever  she  writes  with  it,  is  sometimes 
mistaken  for  a  mere  humorist,  a  master  in 
mosaic,  who  would  rather  spear  a  jest,  as  some 
one  misprinted  it,  than  spare  a  friend.  But  in 
the  now  considerable  body  of  her  work — which 
he  who  does  not  know  has  ill  kept  up  with  the 
best  commentary  on  our  American  thought — 
Miss  Repplier  has  always  a  sane,  an  essentially 
serious,  an  open-minded  point  of  view,  a  point  of 
view  moreover  which  walks  not  in  the  ranks  of 
unthinking  majorities  nor  prides  itself  on  the 
other  hand  on  singularity  for  singularity's  sake. 
With  all  her  raillery  and  mastery  of  ridicule, 
Miss  Repplier  is  always  on  the  side  of  the  angels. 

"Points  of  Friction"  is  a  happy  title  for  a 
series  of  papers  which  deal  with  our  current 
vagaries  of  thought  and  comment  on  things  as 
various  as  woman,  prohibition,  spiritism,  senti- 
mentality, the  misuses  of  money,  of  humor  and 

22 


OUR  MISS  REPPLIER 

optimism,  the  decay  of  conservatism  and  the  Hke. 
It  is  refreshing  to  find  an  author  unwilling  to  be 
bound  by  that  silly  unwritten  agreement  which 
banishes  from  our  conversation  and  allusion  any 
word  about  the  war.  It  is  refreshing  too,  to 
find  Miss  Repplier  not  wholly  satisfied  with 
things  as  we  have  contrived  to  malform  them  in 
our  post-bellum  antics,  political  and  other. 

It  is  a  strange  obsession  of  the  time  that  be- 
cause we  can  dash  about  from  place  to  place 
with  a  celerity  heretofore  undreamed  and  com- 
municate our  foolish  thoughts  to  each  other  at 
the  trifling  expense  of  all  privacy  we  are  there- 
fore wiser  and  better  than  all  the  ages.  And  a 
contempt  for  the  past  follows  in  lives  so  occupied 
with  the  trivial  present  that  we  have  no  time 
to  learn.  In  "The  Virtuous  Victorian"  Miss 
Repplier  delightfully  turns  the  tables  on  our 
condescending  portrayal  of  an  age,  an  intellectual, 
and  literary  equality  with  which,  with  all  our 
accomplishment,  we  dare  not  claim.  In  like 
spirit  is  the  essay  on  "Living  with  History." 
with  its  appeal  to  the  larger  perspective,  which 
is  our  birth-right,  and  the  discard  of  which  leads 
to  so  many  of  our  vagaries  in  politics,  religion 
and  education. 

Timely,  too,  are  the  reminders  that  there 
have  been  other  things  than  the  love  of  gold  to 
stir  the  passions  of  men,  and  sway  the  world — 

23 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

things  such  as  "great  waves  of  reHgious  thought, 
great  births  of  national  Hfe,  great  discoveries, 
great  passions  and  great  wrongs. "  Could  it  be 
that  this  discreditable  orgy  of  petty  extortion 
and  organized  greed  which  now  possesses  us,  this 
loss  of  the  sense  of  honor  and  proportion  in  pub- 
lic as  well  as  in  private  life,  is,  after  all,  only  the 
reaction  to  the  lax  string  after  the  tension  that 
made  us  all  more  or  less  patriots?  It  is  charity 
to  the  age  to  believe  it. 

In  another  place  Miss  Repplier  pays  her 
respects  to  our  contemporary  American  hero, 
"the  athletic  millionaire,"  who  from  an  office 
boy  or  elevator  man  has  become  a  luminary  in 
high  finance,  and  she  wickedly  points  out  his 
laureate,  who  from  his  pulpit  expatiates  upon 
his  patron's  virtues,  especially  his  affability  and 
kindliness  to  each  of  his  fellow  citizens  in  whom 
he  condescendingly  recognizes,  after  all,  "one  of 
God's  creatures,"  like  himself.  Miss  Repplier  is 
never  better  in  her  merry  mechante  raillery  of 
pretension  and  sycophancy.  The  golden  calf, 
she  tells  us,  "has  never  changed  since  it  was  first 
erected  in  the  wilderness,  the  original  model 
hardly  admitting  of  improvement."  And  how 
delicious  is  the  palpable  hit:  "There  are  Amer- 
icans who  appear  to  love  their  country  for  much 
the  same  reason  that  Stevenson's  'child'  loves 
the  'friendly  cow': 

24 


OUR  MISS  REPPLIER 

"  '  She  gives  me  cream  with  all  her  might 
To  eat  with  apple  tart.'  " 

And  bettering  her  allusion  in  the  turn  which 
she  gives  it,  as  Miss  Repplier  usually  does,  she 
concludes:  "When  the  supply  of  cream  runs 
short  the  patriot's  love  runs  shorter."  And  "he 
holds  violent  mass-meetings  to  complain  of  the 
cow,  of  the  quality  of  the  cream  and  of  its  dis- 
tribution." 

There  are  no  more  delightful  papers  than 
those  on  "Woman  Enthroned,"  "The  Strayed 
Prohibitionist"  and  "Dead  Authors."  This 
last  warns  us  of  our  impending  fate  as  readers 
when  authors  who  have  gone  before  and  those 
who  begin  authorship  in  the  next  world  shall 
communicate  their  ceaseless  endeavors.  Miss 
Repplier  has  noticed,  with  some  other  ob- 
servers, that  the  new  spiritism  has  added  to 
the  horrors  of  the  afterworld  one  never  sug- 
gested even  by  the  imaginations  of  Dante  or 
Milton,  and  this  is  our  complete  loss,  after  death 
not  only  of  all  our  talents,  but  even  of  our  com- 
mon sense.  She  has  noticed  likewise  that  the 
spirit  world  is  not  notable  for  the  gift  of  pro- 
phecy and  seldom  forestalls  the  newspapers.  As 
a  woman  Miss  Repplier  recognizes — as  many  a 
man  has  recognized,  but  dare  not  avow  it — that 
equality  of  man  and  woman  involves  equality  of 
responsibility  as  well  as  equality  of  opportunity. 

25 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

And  once  again — also  somewhat  like  a  man,  did  he 
dare  or  could  he  say  ithalf  so  well — Miss  Repplier 
actually  questions  the  certainty  of  the  immed- 
iate regeneration  of  the  world  upon  universal 
woman's  suffrage.  Some  of  Miss  Repplier's 
sisters  will  have  to  look  into  this;  it  will  never  do. 
"The  Strayed  Prohibitionist"  runs  the  gamut 
of  drink,  strong  and  sweet,  through  the  literature 
of  the  ages,  but  so  deftly  and  so  trippingly  that 
we  are  never  oppressed  by  an  allusiveness  which 
is  little  short  of  amazing.  But  there  is  solid 
thought  for  more  than  the  author  queried  in 
this:  "I  am  convinced  that  if  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
characters  ate  and  drank  more  they  would  be 
less  obsessed  by  sex."  It  would  be  difficult  to 
find  a  wiser  summary  of  the  whole  law  of  pro- 
hibition than  Miss  Repplier's  quotation  from 
Milton:  "They  are  not  skilful  considerers  of 
human  things  who  imagine  to  remove  sin  by  re- 
moving the  matter  of  sin." 


ONE  OF  THE  THREE  GRACES 

IT  HAS  been  my  happy  fortune  to  view  for  re- 
view, successively  and  of  late,  the  estimable 
essays  of  two  ladies,  or  to  put  it  in  elder  wise,  the 
essays  of  two  estimable  ladies — Mrs.  Clipston 
Sturgis,  in  whom  Boston  rejoices,  and  our  own 
Miss  Repplier,  whom,  in  true  Philadelphia 
fashion,  we  appreciate,  but  not  nearly  enough. 
To  complete  this  embarrassment  of  riches  there 
comes  to  me  now  a  third — and  no  minor  third 
either — in  Miss  Winifred  Kirkland,  to  complete 
the  triad.  And  while  my  case  is  not  quite  that 
of  fabled  Paris  of  Troy,  asked  to  judge  between 
three  goddesses,  as  well  might  one  say,  which  is 
the  loveliest  of  the  graces,  as  determine,  which  of 
these  skillful  craftswomen  in  the  delicate  art 
of  the  essay  is  to  carry  off  the  palm  from  her 
sisters.  However,  I  see  no  reason  why  the  palm 
should  be  carried  off  or  even  paraded,  and,  re- 
membering what  comparisons  are,  they  are 
easily  evaded.  A  more  liberal  lover  am  I  than 
was  ever  doughty  Captain  Macheath,  of  "The 
Beggers'  Opera,"  who  could  only  have  been 
happy  with  either.  In  this  matter  of  essays,  be 
they  but  written  in  the  manner  of  these,  and  I 
can  be  happy  with  any  or  them  all. 

Miss  Kirkland,  who  will  be  remembered  by 
many  as  the  author  of  a  striking  essay  in  the 

27 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Atlantic  not  very  long  since,  ''The  New  Death," 
entitles  her  new  volume  "The  View  Vertical," 
in  a  clever  introductory  essay,  contrasting  the 
horizontal  attitude  of  the  body  which  was  ours 
in  our  amoeban  days  back  in  the  primeval  slime, 
with  our  gradual  rise  through  the  ape  to  the  hu- 
man's vertical  or  upright.  It  is  a  pleasing  fancy 
that  we  stand  thus,  as  men  and  women,  facing 
life,  to  view  things  from  the  vantage  of  such 
stature  as  may  be  ours.  And  it  may  be  said  and 
truly  that  Miss  Kirkland's  own  view  is  always 
the  view  forthright,  frank,  kindly,  illuminated 
with  a  wit  in  decorous  control  and  warmed 
with  a  humor  that  reaches  humor's  best  ex- 
treme at  times  in  tenderness  of  feeling.  What 
pleasing  titles  are  some  of  these.  Miss  Kirk- 
land's former  volume  was  called  "The  Joys  of 
Being  a  Woman,"  and  Mrs.  Sturgis  indulged  in 
"Random  Reflections  of  a  Grandmother." 
Moreover,  how  these  our  graces  in  the  literary 
arts,  are  shutting  mere  miserable  man  out  in  the 
cold.  They  have  us  hopelessly  beaten  at  the 
game;  we  who  know  only  the  neglected  condition 
of  being  a  man  and,  as  grandfathers,  are  our- 
selves little  more  than  reflections.  Among  the 
delectable  titles  of  Miss  Kirkland  are  "Con- 
fessions of  a  Scene  Maker,"  "Stylish  Stouts," 
"A  Soliloquy  on  Sorting"  and  "Drudgery  as  a 
Fine  Art,"  delightful  in  substance  as  well  as   in 

28 


ONE  OF  THE  THREE  GRACES 

title.  There  is  not  one  of  these  which  does  not 
subtly  glory  in  the  joy  of  being  a  woman.  I  will 
not  say  that  only  a  woman  can  make  a  scene, 
though  assuredly  none  can  make  one  more  suc- 
cessfully. "Stylish  Stouts"  suggests  that  we 
turn  the  other  way  lest  we  pry  into  business 
which  is  none  of  ours.  It  is  only  in  drudgery, 
man's  proper  portion,  that  we  share,  and  none 
of  us  can  approach  the  art  of  the  charming  wo- 
man set  forth  by  Miss  Kirkland  in  this  essay. 

Some  time  since  a  polite  publisher  returned 
the  manuscript  of  a  book  of  essays  with  a  new 
excuse:  It  was  too  disjointed  in  subject  matter. 
Table  talk,  a  dictionary  and  the  essay,  these  are 
the  three  things  in  life — about  the  only  ones  left 
— which  have  not  been  organized  into  consis- 
tency. One  of  the  reasons  for  the  fabled  Mrs. 
Partington's  fondness  for  dictionaries  was  that 
in  the  reading  of  them  and  of  encyclopedias  she 
found  such  a  lively  change  of  subject.  Miss 
Kirkland's  "Views  Vertical"  are  ever  consistent 
in  their  verticality,  but  her  subject  matter  is  as 
changing  in  mood  and  as  varied  in  theme  as  even 
the  heart  of  Mrs.  Partington  could  wish.  Dis- 
jointed forsooth!  Why  shouldn't  we  be  dis- 
jointed.^ Whenever  a  man  writes  a  book,  does 
he  enter  into  a  contract  to  write  a  sermon  or 
a  disquisition,  a  treatise  and  drag  a  dismal,  clank- 
ing  chain   of   logic  .^     Do   we    have   to   put   off 

29 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

human  nature  the  moment  we  get  into  print  and 
be  consistent,  sequent  and  disquisitional?  I  am 
glad  that  women  have  undertaken  to  right  this 
wrong,  too,  among  the  many  wrongs  they  are 
hunting  out  now  that  they  have  their  rights. 
Let  us  have  the  inalienable  right  of  the  essayist 
to  say  whatever  she  at  least  likes,  to  change  her 
subject  as  often  as  her  gown  or  her  bonnet  and 
decorate  it  as  riotously. 

If  I  were  asked  to  name  the  seven  cardinal 
virtues  of  the  essay — which  like  the  cardinal 
virtues  that  sustain  mankind  and  in  their  per- 
fect conjunction  give  rise  to  saintship — I  should 
say  that  they  are  humor,  ease,  brevity  and 
charm,  and  these  be  of  the  first  order — for  there 
is  precedence  even  among  cardinals — and,  in 
second  rank,  wit,  irony  and  paradox.  Egotism 
or  personality,  you  ask.''  All  essays  are  about 
"myself,"  that  is  why,  out  of  sympathy,  we  like 
them.  Learning.^  Valuable  in  an  essay  in  pro- 
portion as  you  contrive  to  conceal  it.  Miss 
Kirkland's  humor  is  pervading;  it  is  a  quality 
inherent,  not  a  thing  sought  and  worn  as  an  ex- 
ternal decoration.  Take  the  perfect  little  essay 
"On  Adopting  One's  Parents,"  founded  on  the 
paradox  of  an  inversion  of  life's  usual  relation- 
ship; its  method  is  delicate  humor,  shot  with  wit 
and  deepening  into  a  genuine  sentiment  which 
warms  the  heart  as  we  read.     "Hold  Izzy"  is 

30 


ONE  OF  THE  THREE  GRACES 

based  on  an  incident  none  the  less  true,  we  may 
well  believe,  that  it  is  preposterous,  in  which  a 
lady,  the  customer  of  a  Jewish  storekeeper,  has 
Izzy,  "a  large  and  lusty  babe,"  impulsively 
deposited  in  her  arms  by  the  father  in  his  zeal  to 
find  something  which  the  customer  has  come  in 
to  buy.  But  the  humorous  incident  becomes  a 
homily:  "Some  people  are  foreordained  to  hold 
Izzy.  Some  people  are  foreordained  to  have 
their  Izzy  held.  I  have  held  Izzy.  I  have  had  my 
Izzy  held  for  me,  but  I  am  wondering:  have  I 
ever  been  Izzy  myself." 

"Family  Phrases"  gives  us  a  vivid  glimpse 
into  the  intimacies  of  a  rector's  household  which 
it  would  have  been  a  delight  and  a  privilege  to 
have  known.  It  is  written  all  over  with  charm; 
and  as  to  personality,  if  you  miss  it  where  it  Is 
everywhere,  you  are  a  very  dull  reader.  I  am 
not  sure  that  I  should  not  commend  Miss  Kirk- 
land  for  her  command  of  the  virtue  of  brevity  as 
much  as  for  anything  else.  Brevity  is  a  sense  — 
rather  an  intuition — for  the  certain  evasion  of 
the  word  too  much.  Few  possess  it;  even  fewer 
practice  it.  And  more  pictures  are  spoiled  by 
the  line  too  many  than  by  the  line  too  few.  To- 
ward the  end.  Miss  Kirkland's  volume  gravi- 
tates into  books — though  "gravitate"  is  not 
precisely  the  word.  Our  friend,  Mr.  Newton, 
may  look  to  his  laurels  after  a  perusal  of  "The 

31 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Man  in  the  Dictionary,"  none  other  to  be  sure 
than  Mr.  Newton's  own  Dr.  Johnson.  And 
"Shakespeare  and  the  Servant  Problem"  is  alike 
a  contribution  to  the  appreciation  of  Shake- 
speare and  to  a  very  pressing  contemporary 
social  problem.  I  like  an  essayist  who  sends  me 
back  to  old  friends.  I  shall  read  George  Mere- 
dith's "Egotist"  next  time  with  my  eye  on 
young  Crossjay,  thanks  to  "A  Boy  in  a  Book"; 
and  I  may  even  get  back  again  to  "Robinson 
Crusoe. "  As  to  Jane  Austen,  thither  I  need  no 
beguilement.  In  an  adjustment  of  words  of 
Izaak  Walton:  He  who  knows  not  Jane  Austen 
nor  Miss  Kirkland's  charming  essay  on  * 'Vict- 
uals and  Drink  in  Jane  Austen's  Novels"  de- 
serves not  to  know  either. 


THE  QUAINTNESS  OF  MR.  CROTHERS 

AN  ingenious  friend  of  mine  has  divided  books 
,.  into  two  very  definite  and  quite  exclusive 
classes,  the  one  of  the  other.  These  are  the 
plus  books  and  the  minus  books.  This  is  not 
the  same  thing  as  the  long  books  and  the  short 
ones;  nor  yet  a  matter  dependent  on  the  major 
or  minor  reputations  of  authorships.  A  plus 
book  is  a  book  the  reading  of  which  leaves  the 
reader  the  better,  the  happier,  the  more  hopeful; 
a  book  which  appeals  to  what  is  good  in  you  and 
lifts  you  a  bit  out  of  the  slough  and  despondency 
of  the  world.  A  minus  book  is  one  which  leaves 
the  reader  deprived,  if  not  depraved,  a  book 
which  clouds  the  sun  and  deafens  the  ear  to  the 
singing  of  birds  and  the  prattle  of  children.  A 
minus  book  may  be  true — most  damnably  true — 
it  may  be  brilliant,  imaginative,  compelling,  con- 
vincing; all  this  makes  its  minus  quality  the 
more  certain,  for  it  is  art  enlisted  in  the  service 
of  the  enemy  of  mankind,  who  is  always  elbow- 
ing us  into  the  slough  of  despond.  Nor  is  a  plus 
book  that  deadly  thing,  an  improving  book;  for 
he  who  counts  his  gains  in  his  reading  like  a 
tradesman  the  balance  of  his  ledger,  should  be 
deprived  of  the  sweet  uses  of  literature.  A  plus 
book  is  one  that  adds  something  to  the  clarity  of 
our  vision  or  to  our  charity  toward  men.     It  is  a 

33 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

book  which  helps,  which  vitaHzes  and  ennobles; 
not  one  which  debilitates  and  unnerves. 

In  a  new  book  by  Mr.  Crothers  we  are  always 
sure  of  pleasure  by  the  way,  for  he  carries  the 
torches  of  his  quaint  and  original  wit  wherever 
he  goes.  We  are  sure  likewise  of  something  else, 
and  that  is  of  getting  something  tangible  and  to 
the  good,  not  in  the  way  of  the  brass  counters  of 
information,  perhaps — for  Mr.  Crothers  uses  a 
coinage  of  a  higher  denomination  and  of  a  dif- 
ferent metal — but  in  the  way  of  a  clearer,  a 
kindlier,  a  saner  view  of  the  topic  under  discussion. 

What  an  excellent  thing  it  would  be  if  we 
could  catch  some  one  of  our  busy  "educators" 
and  compel  him  to  read  and  ponder  such  as  essay 
as  Mr.  Crothers'  "Dame  School  of  Experience. " 
Therein  the  author  visits  an  ancient  schoolhouse, 
older  than  the  little  red  one  which  we  sentimen- 
talize about,  presided  over  by  "a  withered 
dame"  who  discourses  tartly  on  education  from 
troglodyte  times  to  our  no  very  different  own. 
After  considerable  fencing,  noting  which  our 
"educator"  might  learn  much  from  that  past 
into  which  he  is  too  busy  to  look,  the  author 
comments:  "You  have  really  modern  ideas 
after  all.  You  believe  in  learning  by  doing. 
'Not  exactly,'  is  the  reply.  'At  least  not  by 
doing  what  they  (the  pupils)  are  told  to  do.  My 
pupils  arc  always  doing  something  or  other — and 

34 


QUAINTNESS  OF  MR.  CROTHERS 

it  is  generally  wrong.  They  have  more  activity 
than  good  sense.  The  world  is  full  of  creatures 
that  are  doing  things  without  asking  why.  You 
can't  educate  a  grasshopper.  He  is  too  busy 
hopping.  The  peculiarity  of  man  is  that  some- 
times you  can  induce  him  to  stop  and  think." 
Sometimes.  Here  is  a  thought  for  an  "edu- 
cator": "The  real  teacher  is  a  radical  reformer 
who  habitually  uses  the  most  conservative 
means  to  attain  revolutionary  ends. "  Notice 
the  antithesis  between  "the  real  teacher"  and 
"the  educator,"  who,  if  Mr.  Crothers  will  for- 
give a  parody  of  his  words,  is  a  timorous  stand- 
patter who  incessantly  employs  revolutionary 
methods  to  attain  mediocre  results. 

Here  is  a  passage  from  "The  Teacher's 
Dilemma,"  on  a  subject  much  misunderstood: 
"Up  to  a  certain  point  we  all  believe  in  the  pro- 
cess of  leveling  up.  We  would  raise  the  grade  of 
the  highway  till  it  gives  a  convenient  approach 
to  our  front  door.  Any  uplifting  of  the  road  be- 
yond that  would  leave  us  in  a  hole.  We  cease  to 
regard  the  public  improvement  as  a  betterment 
and  bring  suit  for  damages."  This,  in  its  direct- 
ness, its  truth,  humor  and  point,  is  distinctive 
of  the  original  and  effective  method  of  Mr. 
Crothers.  His  teaching  is  much  by  parable. 
Has  our  "educator"  discovered  anything  better 
since  last  Tuesday  morning.'' 

35 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

"Every  Man's  Natural  Desire  to  be  Some- 
body Else"  searches  into  those  dreams  unreal- 
ized, those  potentialities  fated  to  remain  such 
which  lie  hidden  in  the  consciousness  of  us  all. 
"The  Perils  of  the  Literate"  finds  in  our  very 
knowledge  and  reading  the  cause  of  many  of  our 
most  cherished  prejudices.  The  catechism  in 
popular  historical  opinion  as  based  on  the  pre- 
judices of  reading  is  well  put  and  it  may  well 
give  us  pause  to  inquire,  each  of  himself:  "  Do  you 
really  know  any  London  except  that  of  Dickens  ? " 
or  "To  what  extent  has  your  older  history  of 
England  been  dependent  on  drama  or  fiction .'' " 

A  droll  idea — one  thoroughly  characteristic 
of  Mr.  Crothers — is  that  of  a  spiritual  adviser  of 
efficiency  experts;  and  who  could  need  any 
spiritual  advice  more  sadly  than  he  whose  wor- . 
ship  is  of  the  great  god,  Get-things-done  .^  Not 
many  years  since  the  dean  of  a  well  known  college 
boasted  of  a  monthly  session  of  his  faculty  in 
which,  placing  "the  curve  of  ideal  efficiency" 
(whatever  that  may  mean)  upon  a  blackboard, 
he  compared  with  it  the  curve  of  each  member  of 
his  unhappy  official  family,  praising,  admonish- 
ing, as  the  case  might  be  and,  as  he  put  it,  "  main- 
taining a  grip  on  things" — and  on  far  more 
than  things.  Happily  does  Mr.  Crothers  say  in 
another  connection:  "In  dealing  with  a  thing, 
you  must  first  find  out  what  It  Is,  and  then  act 

36 


QUAINTNESS  OF  MR.  CROTHERS 

accordingly.  But  with  a  person,  you  must  find 
out  what  he  is  and  then  carefully  conceal  from 
him  the  fact  that  you  have  made  the  discovery. " 
Mr.  Crothers'  advice  to  the  efficiency  experts  is 
sadly  needed  and  nothing  could  be  neater  than 
the  satire  of  the  experts'  extension  of  his 
"methods"  for  the  shoveling  of  clay  by  Sobrin- 
sky  and  Flaherty,  with  the  noted  capacity  of 
shovel  and  wheelbarrow  and  the  time  needed  to 
move  a  hundred  cubic  feet  of  the  same,  to  Good- 
win and  Brown,  transferrers  of  literature  by  means 
of  daily  themes  into  the  minds  of  so  many  fresh- 
men in  a  given  period  of"  loading  and  dumping." 
In  one  of  the  most  significant  of  these  essays, 
Mr.  Crothers  pays  attention  to  that  recurrent 
topic,  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  There  is  much  more 
than  pleasantry  in  his  criticism  of  our  prevalent 
extension  of  the  motives  and  ideals  which 
brought  about  the  American  Revolution  back- 
ward into  Puritan  times  where  they  do  not  be- 
long. And  the  vivid  picture  of  the  Puritan 
spirit  which  he  draws,  especially  in  its  emphasis 
on  the  state  and  its  certainty  as  to  its  divine 
mission,  is  well  brought  into  contrast  with  the 
vastly  different  ideals  of  the  political  equality  of 
man  which  animated  the  politics  of  the  Revo- 
lution. Mr.  Crothers  employs  his  learning,  like 
his  wit,  in  the  interests  of  his  subject,  airing 
neither,  but  lighting  his  path  with  the  steady 

37 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

glow  of  the  one  and  the  momentary  superlllu- 
mination  of  the  other,  as  required. 

A  timely  word,  too,  is  that  on  the  "Unpre- 
paredness  of  Liberalism,"  in  which  the  author 
calls  seriously  into  question  the  notion  that  it  is 
to  the  revolutionist  alone  that  we  owe  human 
progress.  Wisely  does  he  admonish  us  that  you 
cannot  tear  down  your  house  and  continue  to 
live  in  it,  or  leave  it  unrepaired  and  not  be  ulti- 
mately driven  out  of  it.  Moreover,  it  is  not  the 
house  that  is  in  need  of  repairing,  it  is  the  man 
himself;  and  to  kill  him  or  leave  him  to  his  fate, 
neither  is  to  cure  him.  Like  all  true  idealists, 
Mr.  Crothers  is  discouraged  with  the  surge  of 
materialism,  selfishness  and  pettiness  which  is 
now  englufing  our  struggling  world.  And  Amer- 
ican leadership  in  all  this  is  not  enchanting.  But 
steadfast,  as  a  man  of  high  hope,  he  writes  of  us 
as  "in  the  dawn  of  a  new  day"  in  which,  true  to 
our  essential  nature,  we  shall  yet  take  up  our 
responsibilities,  international  as  well  as  national 
and  parochial. 


THE  TERRIBLE  MR.  GOLDRING 

IS  a  man  to  be  judged  by  what  he  reads — at 
least  by  what  he  reads  in  pubHc?  Or  is  that 
"a  question  not  to  be  asked"?  In  riding  about 
on  commuters'  trains  and  others  in  America 
and  in  England,  I  have  noticed  a  contrast  in  the 
nature  of  the  reading  of  the  average  passenger. 
A  five  o'clock  suburban  in  America  is  a  wilder- 
ness of  the  afternoon  papers,  which  flourishes 
as  the  leaves  of  Vallombrosa  for  four  or  five 
stations  and  then  dies  down  into  talk.  On  trains 
set  for  a  longer  journey  our  magazines  of  enter- 
tainment bud  forth,  making  a  chair-car  a  par- 
terre of  color.  But  rarely  does  man  or  woman 
read  a  bound  book;  to  open  such  is  to  proclaim 
oneself  "  a  highbrow, "  which  appears  to  be  about 
as  low  a  state  as  man  can  fall  to.  In  England  the 
daily  newspapers  do  not  appear  to  be  so  com- 
monly read  on  trains — at  least  of  the  better  class, 
and  on  longer  journeys  substantial  books  are 
often  read  with  apparent  assiduity — for  your 
Englishman  would  rather  read  a  dull  book  than 
adventure  conversation  with  a  stranger.  On  a 
journey  from  Plymouth  to  London  a  few  years 
ago,  I  counted  a  round  dozen  of  my  fellow  pas- 
sengers reading  bound  books,  and  having  the 
curiosity  of  a  Christopher  Morley  in  this  parti- 
cular, I  succeeded  in  ascertaining  that  most  of 

39 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

them  were  novels,  and  moreover  current  novels 
of  the  nature  and  contents  of  which  I  remain 
impenitently  ignorant. 

Before  receiving  Douglas  Goldring's  "Repu- 
tations" "to  be  reviewed,"  an  advance  circular 
came  to  me  which  whetted  my  curiosity.  It 
seems  that  the  book  has  "created  a  sensation," 
it  has  been  acrimoniously  attacked  and  vigor- 
ously defended;  it  has  become  in  consequence 
that  enviable  thing,  "a  brisk  seller";  authentic 
authorship  has  always  its  foundations  in  the 
seller.  And  I  naturally  looked  into  "Who's 
Who,"  wherein  are  gathered,  together  with  the 
famous,  so  many  to  whom,  on  inquiry,  the  owls 
of  oblivion  will  shortly  echo  back  "  Who-Who"! 
And  behold ;  the  name  of  Goldring,  unlike  that  of 
Abu-ben-Adhem,  did  not  lead  the  rest;  it  was  not 
there.  An  Oxford  man,  an  editor,  subeditor  and 
publisher  of  several  journals,  defunct  or  still  sur- 
viving, the  author  of  "a  very  charming  book  of 
poems  entitled  'Streets,'  "  of  books  of  travel,  of 
a  play,  and  thirty-one  years  of  age — and  not  in 
"Who's  Who"!  Our  suspicions  as  to  the  de- 
cayed internal  condition  of  Denmark  must  be 
extended  to  England,  particularly  when  we 
glean,  as  we  may  from  "Reputations,"  that  Mr. 
Goldring  is  an  international  socialist  in  consti- 
tutional disagreement  with  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
and  severely  critical  of  Mr.  Wells,  when  we  hear 

40 


THE  TERRIBLE  MR.  GOLDRING 

that  Mr.  Goldring  is  "secretary  of  the  Clarte 
movement,"  which  wise  people  will  know  all 
about,  but  as  to  which  a  humble  reviewer  of 
books — only  books — must  confess  to  a  supreme 
ignorance.  I  have  not  been  able  to  scrape  to- 
gether much  more  about  Mr.  Goldring;  for  not 
being  in  "Who's  Who,"  there  is  no  record  of  his 
favorite  sport.  From  "  Reputations, "  however 
I  should  infer  that  it  is  not  war,  unless  it  be  car- 
ried on  by  way  of  reviews. 

"Reputations"  is  a  well-written  collection  of 
papers,  less  on  matters  of  moment  than  on 
things  of  the  moment.  The  appreciation  of  the 
late  James  Elroy  Flecker  is  timely,  interesting 
and,  allowing  for  its  contemporaneousness  and 
wholly  creditable  bias  of  friendship,  just  and 
fair.  "Reputations"  has  in  it  much  wit  and  an 
abundance  of  clever  hitting  which  one  might 
enjoy  the  better  were  he  nearer  the  ropes. 
Whether  Mr.  Goldring  has  really  administered 
the  knockout  blow  to  the  reputations  of  several 
of  his  small  novelist  victims,  it  Is  quite  impos- 
sible to  say  at  this  distance.  Due  to  the  above- 
mentioned  American  habit  of  reading  the  news- 
papers instead  of  contemporary  minor  fiction — 
in  which  we  are  perhaps  not  much  further  from 
reality.  I  do  not  find  myself  bristling  with 
intelligence  when  I  hear  of  "the  author  of 
'Tarr, '  "   nor  do   I   feel   sympathetically  exas- 

41 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

perated  with  the  "Outburst  on  GIssing, "  I 
gather  from  Mr.  Goldring  that  his  friend,  Mr. 
D.  H.  Lawrence — a  poet  whom  I  know  and 
admire  for  much  that  is  sound  and  vital — is 
the  only  immediately  contemporary  writer  of 
novels  who  can  be  safely  accepted.  And  I 
am  in  no  mood  to  argue  the  question.  I  am 
willing  to  accept  the  pungent  criticisms  of  Messrs. 
Mackensie,  Cannon  and  Walpole,  the  three 
"Georgian  novelists"  whom  Mr.  Goldring  sin- 
gles out  for  his  especial  censures,  and  I  find  the 
paper  on  "  Clever  Novels  "  very  pleasant  reading, 
like  a  book  of  travels  into  some  heartily  unimpor- 
tant country  whither  I  should  never  care  to  go. 
I  suppose  that  the  sundry  people  who  are 
mawled  in  this  paper — they  and  their  friends — 
must  feel  bad  about  it.  But  it  seems  afar  off  and 
trivial  to  one  deprived  of  the  joy  of  living  in  the 
purlieus  of  literary  London,  one  who,  moreover, 
would  rather  read  something  else  than  third- 
rate  fiction. 

Apparently  they  take  these  things  quite  seri- 
ously in  England.  Were  it  anywhere  else  we 
might  be  tempted  to  call  it  provincial.  However 
Mr.  Goldring  has  some  happy  phrases:  "A 
fringe  of  distinguished  dull  dogs  who  wrote 
books";  "a  deafening  silence  broken  only  by  the 
sound  of  the  white  rabbits  of  criticism  scuttling 
to  cover";  "A  writer  is  never  so  much  a  man 

42 


THE  TERRIBLE  MR.  GOLDRING 

and  a  brother  (or  a  woman  and  a  sister)  as  when 
he  (or  she)  is  behaving  Hke  a  toad";  and  the 
positively  brilliant  designation  of  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett  as  "the  Gordon  Selfredge  of  English 
letters";  and  if  you  do  not  know  what  that 
means,  kind-hearted  reader,  it  is  worth  a  journey 
to  London  to  find  out.  Mr.  Goldring  has  a 
pleasant  little  story  of  an  interview  with  Mr. 
Watts-Dunton;  of  a  momentary  undignified 
contact  with  the  great  George  Bernard;  and 
there  is  a  delightful  anecdote  of  an  Irish  lion  in 
letters  and  his  roaring  on  psycho-analysis  before 
a  bevy  of  entranced  schoolmarms  "  convoked  from 
Girton  College";  but  it  is  too  profane  to  repeat. 
Mr.  Goldring  hates  war,  which  does  not  seem 
very  remarkable;  he  apparently  also  hates  most 
war  poetry,  in  which  we  heartily  concur.  He 
excepts  that,  however,  of  Mr.  Sasoon,  Mr. 
Sitwell  and  others.  He  agrees  with  somebody 
parenthetically,  the  matter  being  thus  best  dis- 
posed of,  that  Swinburne,  is  a  minor  poet.  He 
does  not  say  it,  but  we  infer  that  major  poets 
only  write  in  the  present.  However,  he  has  some 
creditable  likings,  about  which  he  is  depreca- 
tory, for  certain  old  things  Victorian.  With  the 
courage  of  youth  he  defends  certain  "low 
tastes, "  as  he  calls  them,  of  his  own  and  of  others, 
among  them  a  liking  for  detective  stories,  for 
books  of  travel — one  wonders  why — and  for  the 

43 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

revue  (we  call  that  sort  of  thing  "muslcar* 
comedy).  Mr.  Goldring  even  takes  up  the 
cudgels  in  defense  of  the  chorus  girl  and  justi- 
fies the  admiration  which  youth  becomingly 
feels  for  her  sedulous  industry  in  her  "difficult 
art,"  her  good  form  in  it,  so  to  speak,  and  her 
other  good  points — although  this  last  hardly 
seems  the  word.  Best  of  all  I  like  the  enticing 
little  essay,  "Redding  on  Wines,"  though  tell 
it  not  in  Volstead.  It  is  agreeable  to  see  the 
young  active,  interested  in  these  things  which 
they  like  and  expressive  of  this  precious  moment 
in  which  we  are  now  living.  Certainty  as  to  all 
things  mundane  at  the  least,  sweeping  divisions 
(as  Mr.  Goldring  confesses  was  Flecker's  as 
to  poets  into  "magnificent"  and  such  as  write 
"godforsaken  muck"),  oblivion  as  to  the  past, 
dilation  of  things  present — such  are  among  the 
prerogatives  of  youth.  Mr.  Goldring  is  less 
"young"  than  many  of  his  brothers  and  he  is 
quite  engaging  at  times  in  the  act  of  dragging 
people  about.  His  views,  too,  as  to  many  of 
these  little  matters  are  altogether  just.  But  as 
to  these  presentists  of  the  unimportant  and 
their  often  cubicular  deliverances,  is  perspective 
to  become  wholly  a  lost  art.^ 


A  MAN  OF  THE  HAPPY  MEAN 

IN  the  daily  course  of  our  lives  there  are  two 
areas,  so  to  speak,  in  the  community  which 
attract  public  attention.  There  is  first  the  mass 
by  its  mere  mass  in  which  we  may  find  much 
that  we  could  wish  were  otherwise,  but  the 
honest  contemplation  of  which,  when  all  has  been 
said,  should  leave  us  undismayed  as  to  human 
nature.  Secondly,  there  are  those  who  stand  dis- 
tinguished for  effort  and  what  we  call  promi- 
nence, it  may  be  in  public  life,  in  letters,  in 
society,  even  in  conspicuous  wrongdoing.  Be- 
tween these  two  flows  the  main  current  of  our 
American  life,  composed  of  those  who  are  neither 
submerged  nor  partially  submerged  in  the 
struggle  for  existence,  nor  yet  of  their  contrasted 
fellows  who  have  reached  a  momentary  gleam 
in  the  sunshine  of  repute,  whether  to  their  fame 
or  their  scandal. 

And  these  quiet,  serene  and  comfortable  folk 
of  the  centre  are  the  very  mainstay  of  our  cult- 
ure and  our  civilization.  They  never  descend 
into  the  morasses  of  radicalism,  nor  tempt  dan- 
gerous agnostic  heights.  It  would  be  unjust  to 
class  them  with  the  standpatters  who  encumber 
the  road  with  their  frequent  stallings;  for  their 
motion  is  honestly  forward  and  they  keep  to  the 
middle  of  the  road.    The  folk  of  the  centre  be- 

45 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

lieve  in  God  and,  to  their  credit  be  it  said,  try  to 
take  a  kindly  and  practical  Christianity  into 
their  lives.  They  respect  the  past  without  prying 
into  it;  they  live  in  the  present — which  is  the 
only  sane  way  in  which  to  live;  and  they  look 
forward  hopefully  to  the  future,  in  which  they 
may  feel  just  a  little  too  confident  of  their  own 
salvation,  though  it  cannot  be  denied  that  they 
hope — just  a  little  against  hope,  a  very  little — 
that  others  may  be  saved  likewise. 

The  "Life  and  Letters  of  the  late  Hamilton 
W.  Mabie"  is  an    interesting    book,    biograph- 
ically  and    socially.      From   one   point   of    view 
Mabie's    was    a    singularly    uneventful    career. 
There  is  no  uncertainty,  no  struggle  in  it.     The 
reasonable  comforts,  excellent  education,  oppor- 
tunity, all  were  his,  and  all  were  grasped  hon- 
estly and  employed  to  the  full.     Industry  with 
the  just  fruits  of  the  harvest,  service  cheerfully 
accepted  and  faithfully  performed,  achievement 
and  recognition  and  hosts  of  friends,  all  these  too 
were  his  and  deservedly  his;  Mabie's  was  an  in- 
tegrity that  knew  no  swerving,  a  sweet   reason- 
ableness that  allayed  friction  rather  than  avoided 
it,  a  hopeful  cheerfulness  that  got  much  out  of 
life  which  foreboding  and  discontent  lose.       It 
would  be  difficult  to  imagine  a  more  congenial 
life  than  was  Mr.  Mabie's,  that  is  to  a   man  of 
his   temperament;   the   editor  of  an   influential 

46 


A  MAN  OF  THE  HAPPY  MEAN 

magazine  of  liberal  Christian  opinion,  a  har- 
monious coworker  for  good  with  men  like  Dr. 
Lyman  Abbott  and  later  ex-President  Roosevelt, 
a  platform  lecturer — nearly  if  not  quite  the  last 
of  the  interesting  older  type — greatly  in  request 
and  welcomed  wherever  he  went,  prominent  in 
the  service  of  a  reasonable  churchmanship,  a 
progressive  in  education  and  liberal  in  politics, 
and  a  writer  whose  books  were  always  timely  and 
pleasantly  written  and  read  by  thousands — such 
a  career  is  as  enviable  as  its  success  was  deserved. 
This  book  discloses  many  pleasant  intimacies 
and  friendships,  from  a  momentary  contact  as  a 
student  with  Emerson  and  later  with  Lowell  and 
an  editorial  intimacy  with  the  late  President 
Roosevelt  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  through 
abiding  friendships  with  the  poets,  Stedman  and 
Aldrich,  and  our  great  novelist,  Howells  and 
with  Burroughs,  Henry  van  Dyke  and  Wood- 
berry  the  last  two  of  whom  are  still  happily  with 
us.  A  man  who  could  have  inspired  such  varied 
and  such  faithful  friendships  had  in  him  much  to 
warm  the  hearts  of  men.  And  such  was  un- 
doubtedly true  of  Mabie.  Few  who  have  had  to 
do  even  remotely  with  letters  have  failed  in  these 
latter  years  to  have  met  or  at  least  to  have 
heard  Mr.  Mabie.  He  was  the  happiest  and 
most  tactful  of  presiding  officers,  fit  and 
graceful  In  what  he  had  to  say  and   appealing 

47 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

always  to  what  was  best  and  kindest  in  human 
nature.  I  have  personally  but  one  trivial  little 
anecdote  of  Mr.  Mabie.  He  was  here  in  Phila- 
delphia on  one  occasion  to  lecture  and  in  some 
way  I  was  conducting  him  somewhere  in  the 
wilds  of  West  Philadelphia  beyond  even  that 
remote  region  to  which  the  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania has  since  extended.  It  was  spring  and 
the  grass  was  growing — alas!  it  must  be  con- 
fessed— between  the  bricks  of  the  pavement  on 
which  we  walked.  Rather  to  disarm  critical 
New  York  than  for  any  other  reason,  I  remarked 
that  it  was  only  too  true  that  the  grass  grew  in 
the  streets  of  Philadelphia.  And  at  that  mo- 
ment a  tiny  snake  about  the  size  of  an  angle- 
worm wiggled  across  our  way;  whereupon  Mr. 
Mabie  said,  "Yes,  and  I  am  sorry  to  see  that 
there  are  snakes  in  it,"  and  he  seemed  really 
sorry  despite  the  twinkle  in  his  eye. 

It  is  early  to  estimate  the  service  of  the  late 
Mr.  Mabie  as  an  author,  if  we  are  talking,  as  is 
the  wont,  of  that  fine  thing,  services  to  posterity. 
If  we  are  talking  of  the  present,  which  is  wiser 
as  well  as  more  pertinent,  it  is  much  to  have 
served  the  contemporary  needs  of  the  quiet, 
serene  and  comfortable  folk  of  the  centre,  the 
readers  of  the  Outlook,  for  a  generation  and  to 
have  served  them  so  faithfully  and  so  well. 
There  have  been  more  brilliant  Lives  of  Shake- 

48 


A  MAN  OF  THE  HAPPY  MEAN 

speare  than  that  of  Mr.  Mabie,  few  so  sympathet- 
ic and  so  sincere.  There  have  been  books  on 
nature,  of  literary  appreciation  and  of  spiritual 
admonition  which  the  pundits  of  criticism  may 
rate  above  those  of  Mabie,  but  it  is  doubtful  if 
many  of  them  so  adequately  and  so  whole- 
somely served  their  immediate  purpose.  The 
writings  of  Hamilton  Mabie  perturbed  and 
troubled  nobody.  They  led  many  to  a  kindlier 
and  saner  attitude  toward  life,  and  they  strength- 
ened a  beautiful  confidence  which  it  is  well  to 
know  still  lingers  in  quiet  places  that  all  is  work- 
ing out  to  the  good.  Allowing  for  an  ethical 
trend  in  Mabie  which  the  English  essayist  vent- 
ured not,  I  like  to  think  of  the  work  of  Hamilton 
Mabie  in  the  terms  which  Leigh  Hunt,  once 
used  as  to  his  own  cheerful,  easy,  adequate  prose: 
"These  essays  of  mine  were  never  intended  to  be 
more  than  birds  singing  in  the  trees."  Is  there 
anything  sweeter,  truer,  more  pertinent  than 
wholesome  gladness  in  a  world  which  sadly  needs 
it?  Gladness,  hopefulness,  helpfulness  and  the 
happy  mean.  Honor  to  the  memory  of  him  who 
so  maintained  them. 


"THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY" 

IT  might  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  attractive 
subject  than  this,  the  art  of  biography,  not  a 
mere  enumeration  of  that  enormous  category  of 
books,  those  written  about  other  people,  but  a 
talk  on  the  manner,  the  nature,  the  art  of  the 
thing.  Delivered  originally  in  the  shape  of  lec- 
tures on  the  Barbour-Page  Foundation  at  the 
University .  of  Virginia,  Mr.  William  Roscoe 
Thayer  has  contrived  to  give  to  his  little  book 
the  charm  that  belongs  to  the  familiar  essay 
while  losing  none  of  the  meat  of  a  topic  not  to  be 
mooted  except  on  the  basis  of  a  scholarship  both 
broad  and  sound. 

Biography  is  in  a  sense  an  outgrowth  of 
history;  and  without  cavil  be  it  said  that  bio- 
graphy is  always  close  in  its  allegiance  to  fiction. 
Historians  are  still  much  agog  over  the  momen- 
tous question  how  to  write  history.  Is  the  nar- 
rative of  a  series  of  events,  or  the  narrative  of  a 
man's  life,  to  be  regarded  in  the  nature  of  a  map 
or  in  the  nature  of  a  picture.^  Do  we  read  the 
past  as  we  lay  out  a  journey,  the  chief  object 
being  that  we  may  find  our  path  and  not  go 
astray  at  the  wrong  turning.'*  Or  should  we  read, 
somewhat  at  least,  as  many  would  prefer  to 
walk  or  to  ride  abroad,  for  beauty  and  signif- 
icance of  scene  and  the  exhilaration  of  motion  .f* 

50 


"THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY" 

In  a  map  you  can  identify  this  village  and  that 
hillside  and  determine  with  accuracy  the  rela- 
tions of  the  topography  of  the  country  at  large. 
In  a  picture  you  lose  most  of  these  particular- 
ities, but  in  place  you  have  light  and  shadow  and 
atmosphere  out  of  which  comes  the  recognition 
of  reality.  Mr.  Thayer  has  some  valuable  pages 
on  what  might  be  called  the  three  volume 
modern  statesmen  series  of  biographies,  in  which 
variety  of  "life"  the  map  is  meticulously  drawn 
in  every  petty  and  trivial  detail  and  the  subject 
is  seen  as  in  a  glass  darkly.  The  case  of  Mrs. 
Charles  Kingsley's  life  of  her  eminent  husband 
should  be  kept  in  mind  by  those  who,  under  the 
stress  of  example  and  for  hire,  write  long  lives. 
She  reduced  her  two  volume  book  to  one  and  it  is 
surprising  how  much  was  gained  in  the  reduction. 
It  has  been  suggested  above  that  biography  is 
close  in  its  nature  to  fiction.  This  last  is  one  of 
those  troublesome  words  which  can  hardly  be  em- 
ployed without  a  double  or  a  threefold  meaning. 
To  tell  a  thing  which  never  happened  as  if  it  had 
actually  occurred  may  be  either  art  or  falsehood. 
It  may  be  both.  DeFoe  is  credited  with  an 
unexcelled  power  in  "grave  and  imperturbable 
lying."  But  DeFoe  was  likewise  an  artist;  and 
many  an  occurrence  of  the  novelists',  the  dram- 
atists' or  the  poets'  fiction,  though  never  an 
actual  fact,  is  truer  in  the  large  than  are  often 

51 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

the  recurring  falsities  of  life.  The  old-fashioned 
historians,  Thucydides  and  Livy,  always  put 
a  fine  rhetorical  speech  into  the  mouths  of 
leaders  before  the  sounding  of  a  charge.  This  is 
sometimes  very  absurd,  but  when,  as  often  in  the 
former  of  these  great  writers,  these  speeches  and 
their  like  in  other  situations  are  nicely  calculated 
to  reveal  the  personality  of  the  speaker,  his  point 
of  view  on  the  occasion  and  the  like,  we  have  art, 
not  lying.  Such  outworn  methods  biographical 
are  scarcely  as  reprehensible  as  our  weary 
marshaling  of  "all  the  facts,"  with  the  result  of 
a  wooden  image  instead  of  the  portraiture 
of    a    man. 

Mr.  Thayer's  long  experience  as  a  historian 
and  his  distinguished  success  as  well  in  the  writ- 
ing of  biography  give  to  his  words  in  appraise- 
ment and  on  the  practice  of  his  art  a  peculiar 
authority.  It  is  good,  therefore,  to  have  our 
faith  in  the  pre-eminence  of  Plutarch's  "Lives" 
for  antiquity  and  Boswell's  "Johnson"  for  our 
own  day  so  unmistakably  reaffirmed.  It  is 
better  still  to  have  our  own  somewhat  nebulous 
arguments  on  these  subjects  so  ably  and  au- 
thoritatively re-enforced.  We  hear  from  the 
Shakespeareans  that  Plutarch  alone  of  all  his 
sources  was  the  one  which  Shakespeare  could  not 
better  at  all  times;  and  that  despite  the  fact  that 
the  old  dramatist  read  his  life  of  Caesar  and  of 

52 


"THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY" 

Marc  Antony  only  in  an  English  translation  of 
a  French  translation  of  a  Latin  translation  of  a 
Greek  original.  When  we  add  to  this  that 
Plutarch  himself  wrote  long  after  the  waning  of 
"the  glory  that  was  Greece"  and  "the  grandeur 
that  was  Rome,"  the  freshness  of  his  material, 
its  vitality  and  power  become  the  greater  mar- 
vel. Mr.  Thayer  finds,  among  much  else,  that 
Plutarch's  power  lies  largely  in  hisdefiningeachof 
his  personages  with  a  daylight  clarity,  in  the  cir- 
cumstance that  he  was  a  great  and  wholesome 
moralist,  and  in  his  coming  into  his  art  most 
happily  before  the  world  had  turned  to  intro- 
spection and  become  more  interested  in  how  one 
thing  becomes  something  else,  than  in  either 
thing  in  itself. 

To  medieval  biography  the  author  gives  no 
disproportionate  space.  His  words  of  Eginhard's 
"Life  of  Charlemagne"  invite  us  back  to  that 
important,  but  forgotten,  bit  of  biography,  which 
Is  conspicuous  among  biographical  writings  for 
its  artistic  brevity.  In  three  famous  works  the 
author  finds  medieval  biography  well  typified: 
they  are  De  Joinville's  life  of  the  saintly  knight, 
Louis  IX,  the  beautiful  altruistic  "Fioretti  or 
Little  Flowers  "  of  Saint  Francis  and  the  "  Imita- 
tion of  Christ,"  that  notable  tractate  on  the 
pressingquestion"HowshallIsavemyown  soul.^" 
Another   source   for    Shakespeare,    Cavendish's 

53 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

"Life  of  Cardinal  Wolsey, "  bridges  us  over 
by  way  of  Roper's  "Life  of  Sir  Thomas 
More,"  and  Izaak  Walton's  delightful  "Lives," 
to  modern  times.  To  voice  a  personal  taste,  I 
could  wish  that  there  had  been  more  room  for 
autobiography,  though  that  is  really  a  very  dif- 
ferent subject;  and  I  miss  two  important  and 
favorite  old  books,  the  omission  of  which  I  confess 
none  the  less  might  be  readily  defended.  They 
are  Fulke  Greville's  "Life  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney," 
which  is  a  "life"  and  likewise  a  great  deal  more, 
and  the  delectable  "Autobiography"  of  Lord 
Herbert  of  Cherbury. 

On  modern  biography  this  little  book  is  ex- 
ceedingly suggestive.  It  has  always  been  a  mat- 
ter of  wonder  that  the  greatest  of  all  English 
biographers,  James  Boswell,  should  have  been 
the  coxcomb  that  he  was,  and  the  contrasted 
portraits  of  Boswell  as  drawn  respectively  by 
Macaulay  and  by  Carlyle  have  been  time  out  of 
mind  matter  of  comment.  Boswell  was  a  cox- 
comb, but  a  sheer  fool  does  not  write  the  great- 
est biography  in  the  English  language.  Boswell 
is  often  accredited  with  being  the  first  bio- 
grapher to  document  his  case  and  let  the  subject 
tell  his  own  story.  This  is  not  quite  wholly  true 
and  when  Dr.  Johnson  did  tell  his  own  story  in 
his  "Autobiography,"  he  made  a  poor  fist  of  it. 
Boswell    was    really   a    splendid    literary   artist 

54 


"THE  ART  OF  BIOGRAPHY" 

endowed  with  a  marvelous  sense  of  proportion, 
howsoever  some  have  said  that  he  did  not  know 
a  triviahty  as  such  when  he  saw  one.  And  again, 
Boswell  was  in  love  with  his  subject,  and  the 
wit,  the  learning,  the  odd  and  distinguished 
personality  of  the  great  Cham  of  letters  made 
him  a  peculiarly  happy  subject  for  minute  por- 
traiture. These  are  some  of  the  reasons  why 
Boswell  will  outlive  the  biography  of  that 
greater  man,  Carlyle,  told  malevolently,  if  not 
dishonestly,  by  Froud,  or  other  notable  "lives," 
such  as  that  of  Tennyson,  related  by  his  son,  or 
that  of  Scott,  by  Lockhart,  a  son-in-law,  ad- 
mirable as  this  latter  assuredly  is.  Relatives  are 
congenitally  too  near  to  view  a  biographical 
subject  in  a  true  perspective.  There  should  be  a 
law  against  the  dragging  out  of  any  man's  lares 
and  penates  by  such  as  overloved  or  over- 
envied  him.  To  that  last  phrase  of  the  biograph- 
ical sketch,  "  he  was  happy  even  in  his  death, "  is 
to  be  added  another,  "rare  as  violets  in  winter's 
snow,"  "He  was  blessed  in  his  biographer." 


"POTTERISM" 

lOTTERISM."  The  word  is  an  inspira- 
tion. We  have  wanted  it  now  this  many 
a  day;  for  it  is  a  short  cut  over  the  fields  for  a 
thing  which  we  have  had  to  go  around  to  get  at; 
a  neat  cover  into  which  to  roll  up  a  bundle  of 
ideas  which  have  been  dangling  loose  for  a  long 
time.  And  what  is  "Potterism.^"  Like  most 
words  it  roots  in  several  directions.  Let  a  sugges- 
tion suffice.  A  potter  is  obviously  one  who 
makes  pots  or  jugs,  usually  of  clay;  and  clay— 
which  is  much  the  stuff  out  of  which  men  and 
women  are  made  as  well — is  an  unctuous,  un- 
stable, shapable  material  with  which  vessels  of 
various  kinds  may  be  fashioned,  baked  and  half- 
baked;  and,  even  when  finally  glazed  andpainted, 
they  remain  fragile  and  are  easily  broken. 

A  famous  text,  the  source  of  which,  knowing 
reader,  is  not  the  Bible,  reads:  "One  touch  of 
nature  makes  the  whole  world  kin."  You  may 
preach  a  sermon  on  it,  Mr.  Minister,  or  adorn 
a  peroration  with  it,  Mr.  Orator,  especially  if 
you  do  not  happen  to  know  what  it  means. 
Now  this  "touch"  Is  not  what  careless  pulpit 
eloquence  often  makes  It,  the  Innate  nobility, 
the  common  humanity  of  man,  that  which 
makes  each  of  us  one  of  the  universal  human 
brotherhood.     This  is  pretty,  but  It  is  not  true. 

56 


"POTTERISM" 

The  touch  of  nature  is  really  what  the  theologian 
knows  as  original  sin,  what  you  and  I  call  "the 
old  Adam"  in  each  of  us;  for  the  "touch"  is  the 
taint  of  human  fallibility,  the  weakness  which 
leaves  each  one  of  us,  if  the  truth  be  told  when 
all  is  said,  not  much  better  than  his  neighbor. 
This  is  true  though  I  confess  that  it  is  notpretty. 
But  what  has  this  to  do  with  "Potterism?" 
Shakespeare's  "one  touch  of  nature"  is  "Pot- 
terism." 

"Potterism,"  the  book,  Is  a  story  of  now,  in 
which  the  figures  are  so  typical  that  they  assume 
a  universal  truth.  The  book  is  well  written,  at 
times  brilliantly.  Apothegm  and  epigram  piled 
on  epigram  and  apothegm  make  much  of  it  ex- 
cellent reading.  Somewhat  less  successful  is  the 
effort  to  make  various  parts  of  the  story  appear 
the  utterances"  of  individual  characters,  but  this 
is  not  important  to  the  general  plan,  which  is 
well  carried  out.  The  real  essence  of  the  book  is 
satire  of  our  muddling,  superficial,  self-seeking 
preposterous  modern  civilization,  which  is  ban- 
tered, laughed  at,  shown  up  and  mocked  as  it 
deserves.  But  very  unlike  many  such  books, 
"Potterism"  neither  brings  us  a  cure-all,  which 
turns  out  to  be  as  preposterous  as  what  it  rid- 
icules, nor  does  It  conclude  either  In  despair  or  in 
some  faint-hearted  consolation,  religious  or 
social,   that  means  nothing.     It  is  one  of  the 

57 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

merits  of  this  book   that  it  leaves  us    whole- 
somely unconsoled. 

"Potterism,"  we  are  told  amongst  much  else, 
is  "mainly  an  Anglo-Saxon  disease,  worst  of  all 
in  America,  that  great  home  of  commerce,  suc- 
cess and  the  boosting  of  the  second  rate. "  "Pot- 
tcrism"  welcomes  prosperity  and  ugliness,  propri- 
ety and  cant.  "The  Potterite  has  the  kind  of 
face  which  is  always  turned  away  from  facts 
*  *  hard,  jolly  facts  with  clear,  sharp  edges, 
that  you  can't  slur  or  talk  away."  "Potterism" 
has  no  use  for  them.  It  appeals  over  their 
heads  to  prejudices  and  sentiment."  "Potter- 
ism"  is  all  for  short  and  easy  cuts  and  showy 
results.  It  plays  a  game  of  grab  all  the  time  and 
snatches  its  success  in  a  hurry.  The  Potter  God 
"is  some  being  apparently  like  a  sublimated 
Potterite,  who  rejoices  in  bad  singing,  bad  art, 
bad  praying  and  bad  preaching,  and  sits  aloft  to 
deal  out  rewards  to  those  who  practice  these  and 
punishments  to  those  who  do  not. "  "Potterism 
has  no  room  for  Christianity.  It  prefers  the  God 
of  the  Old  Testament."  However,  "the  Pot- 
terites  have  taken  Christianity  and  watered  it 
down  to  suit  themselves."  The  Potterite  is 
capable,  adaptable,  acquisitive  and  greedy.  He 
docs  things  for  what  there  is  in  them  for  him,  no 
matter  how  much  they  may  seem  to  be  done  for 
others.    The  social  worker  who  prates  "service" 

58 


"POTTERISM" 

and  draws  a  handsome  salary,  the  minister  whose 
eloquence  and  social  qualifications  "call"  him  to 
the  charge  of  a  congregation  of  wealth  and  social 
prominence  where  he  need  no  longer  slum,  the 
man  who  writes  books  which  shall  be  most 
abundantly  salable  or  paints  portraits  which 
shall  bring  him  most  into  vogue — all  of  these  are 
Potterites.  And  the  distinction  is  drawn  between 
all  these  and  him — supposing  he  can  any- 
where be  found — who  seeks  truth  singly  for  the 
love  of  truth  or  beauty  in  art  or  in  living  for  art 
and  for  life.  In  a  word,  disinterestedness  is  the 
one  certain  thing  which  "Potterism"  is  not;  the 
disinterestedness  of  heart  as  to  one's  fellow  men, 
the  disinterestedness  of  mind  that  knows  not 
commercialized  results.  How  very  impractical.^ 
Yes,  "Potterism"  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  prac- 
tical. For  "Potterism"  loathes  figures,  unless 
they  fall  on  the  credit  side.  It  talks  much  of 
principles — but  prefers  interest.  It  would  rather 
face  naked  steel  than  a  naked  fact — It  is  so  im- 
proper. "Potterism"  dotes  on  the  past  which  it 
recreates  with  a  commonplace  imagination  and 
a  loving  sentimentalism  into  something  smack- 
ing of  lavender  and  respectability.  "Potterism" 
is  smug,  persistent,  stubborn  and  in  all  these 
traits  and  many  others  upsets  any  moral  stand- 
ard with  which  to  apply  the  doctrine  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest.     The  basis  of  its  philoso- 

59 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

phy  might  be  stated  in  the  words.  '*I  am  the 
fittest,  therefore  I  survive. "  But  why  attempt 
to  emulate  the  wit  of  Miss  Macaulay,  whose 
story  even  better  than  her  epigrams  details  the 
true  symptoms  of  this  universal  human  malady.'' 
Miss  Macaulay's  hero  is  half  a  Jew  and  half  a 
Russian,  which  is  certainly  flying  in  the  face  of 
contemporary  "Potterism."  He  is  not  a  theorist 
who,  by  force  of  intellect,  overthrows  the  world, 
only  a  man  clear-sighted  and  unprejudiced 
enough  to  see  the  folly  of  it  and  human  enough 
not  to  transcend  human  frailty.  He  is  not  tri- 
umphant, like  a  true  Potterite  hero,  but  falls  in 
the  end  a  victim  equally  to  "Potterism"  and  to 
its  two  opposites,  whichever  is  which,  white  or 
red,  in  Russia.  The  twins,  John  and  Jane,  with 
their  parallel  university  educations,  their  critical 
ideas  and  experiences  in  the  Potterite  world, 
of  which  they  are  part,  seem  not  without  a  cast 
at  a  certain  Joan  and  Peter,  one  of  the  rungs  of 
a  long  ladder,  by  means  of  which  a  certain  his- 
torian of  the  universe  has  attained  to  univer- 
sality. The  twins  are  commonplace,  clever 
young  people,  clear  sighted  enough  intellect- 
ually to  know  a  Potterite  on  sight,  except  when 
looking  in  a  looking  glass.  But  their  souls  are 
Potterish,  wherefore  they  do  what  they  like, 
get  what  they  want,  or  nearly,  succeed  in  the 
success  of  the  world,    which  all    so    love,    and 

60 


"POTTERISM" 

remain  to  the  end,  like  the  rest  of  us,  essentially 
devotees  to  "Potterlsm." 

Your  reviewer  is  not  by  nature  a  pessimist, 
nor  does  he  seek  to  acquire  pessimism.  But 
pessimism,  alas!  in  these  late  days,  is  thrust 
upon  us — most  persistently  thrust  upon  us. 
And  the  thrust  is  often  difficult  to  parry.  With 
ideals  flouted  and  the  idealist  a  pariah  in  his 
own  "land  of  idealism,"  and  with  an  insensate 
world  joyously  slipping  back  into  barbarism  and 
skilfully  mixing  the  cup  for  the  next  deadly 
draught  of  war,  it  is  well  that  some  of  us  can  still 
retain  that  superiority  of  man  over  the  beast, 
the  gift  of  laughter,  even  If  it  be  ironic.  There  is 
really  nothing  in  the  world  so  incredible  as  a 
man — unless  It  be  a  woman.  Wherefore,  analy- 
sis of  self  being  unpleasant — and  also  unwhole- 
some— read  "Potterlsm." 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  ON  LIFE  AND 
LETTERS 

ACQUAINTANCE  with  books  is  much  Hke 
.  acquaintance  with  men:  the  wider  our  circle, 
the  greater  the  chances  of  friendship;  however, 
knowledge  may  bring  with  it  disenchantment  as 
well  as  enchantment.  After  all,  we  may  know 
many  and  yet  love  but  few;  though  when  we 
think  of  the  variety  in  mankind  and  in  bookkind, 
we  should  readily  become  catholic,  if  not  in  our 
tastes  at  least  in  our  discernments.  I  can  like 
almost  any  book — except  a  cash  book,  which  is  a 
thing  to  many  of  us  deceptive,  troublesome  to 
keep,  and  misleading  in  title.  For,  as  with  men, 
in  almost  every  book  there  is  some  good.  In 
these  "Notes  on  Life  and  Letters,"  by  the  fa- 
mous novelist,  Joseph  Conrad,  there  seems  to  me 
only  good,  for  theirs  is  the  discontlnuousness, 
the  variety,  the  Intimacy  of  good  talk.  In  them 
is  neither  the  formality  of  the  essay,  the  irrel- 
evancy of  letters  written  for  some  specific  pur- 
pose, nor  the  limitation  to  subject  which  fiction 
demands  and  receives  from  so  conscientious  a 
novelist  as  Mr.  Conrad.  This  book  lets  us  into 
the  personality  of  a  man  who  is  nowhere 
obtrusive  or  given  to  attitudinizing;  it  Is  like  a 
letter  of  Introduction  to  him  and  he  receives  his 
reader  as  a  friend. 

62 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  ON  LIFE  AND  LETTERS 

To  those  of  us  who  Hve  contentedly  in  one 
locality  all  our  lives,  convinced  that  any  one  born 
elsewhere  is  rather  to  be  pitied,  if  not  mistrusted, 
a  life  such  as  that  of  Mr.  Conrad's  must  seem  not 
only  strange  but  all  but  miraculous.  To  be  born 
within  the  confines  of  that  shadowy  designation 
of  the  ghost  of  a  sometime  country,  Poland — now 
once  again  a  living,  romantic  reality — to  have 
chosen  deliberately  the  sea  as  a  vocation — Poland 
having  no  more  seacoast  than  Shakespearean 
Bohemia;  and  then  to  have  achieved  the  rank  of  a 
leading  writer  in  a  tongue  with  which  his  young 
manhood  found  him  wholly  unacquainted; 
these  are  marvels  to  such  of  us  as  live  at 
home  in  our  back  yards  and  acquire  with  our 
milk  teeth  each  his  own  provincial  nasality  in  the 
pronunciation  of  what  Mr.  Menken  calls  "the 
American  language. " 

I  once  knew  a  clever  foreigner  who  argued 
that  transplanting  from  one  soil  into  another,  if 
the  tree  endures  it  at  all,  is  likely  to  beget  a  more 
vigorous  and  luxuriant  growth;  and  that,  by  the 
same  token,  the  man  who  early  enough  in  his  life 
changes  his  nationality  and  even  his  language,  if 
he  takes  root  and  brings  anything  with  him  from 
the  country  of  his  birth,  will  have  two  eyes  with 
which  to  behold  the  world  instead  of  one.  In  two 
or  three  languaged  men  we  often  find  a  liberality 
of  view  not  characteristic   of   him   only   to   the 

63 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

manner  born.  Of  this  Mr.  Conrad  is  an  example 
in  the  cosmopolitan  spirit  which  is  his,  a  spirit, 
however,  which  has  not  deprived  him  either  of 
a  fervent  love  for  his  mother  Poland,  nor  of  de- 
votion to  his  adopted  mother  England.  The 
several  papers  on  Poland  in  this  volume  are  of  a 
revealing  worth  and  excellence,  Mr.  Conrad 
knows  his  subject  and  loves  his  native  country 
with  a  romantic  passion,  which,  however,  does 
not  obscure  his  comprehension.  "The  Crime  of 
Partition,"  a  round,  unvarnished  tale,  is  worth 
half  the  lengthy  histories  on  this  murder  of  a 
nation;  the  "Note  on  the  Polish  Problem"  sets 
forth  with  striking  brevity  the  plight  of  what  was 
still  at  the  time  of  its  writing  (1916)  the  wraith  of 
a  remembered  wrong.  And  in  "Poland  Re- 
visited" speaks  in  concentrated  fervor  the 
wanderer  returning  to  what  was  once  his. 

It  is  in  "Poland  Revisited"  that  Mr.  Conrad 
tells  how  in  that  fateful  summer  of  1914  he 
accepted  an  invitation  to  visit  Cracow,  trav- 
ersing the  North  Sea  and  Germany  just  before 
the  declaration  of  war,  which  caught  him  in 
Russia,  from  which  he  with  difficulty  at  length 
escaped  by  way  of  Vienna  to  Italy  and  back  to 
England.  It  must  be  gratifying  to  Americans  to 
know  that  the  protection  of  the  American  eagle 
was  extended  over  him  in  the  process,  something 
he  forgets  not  to  mention  with  the  name  of  Mr. 

64 


JOSEPH  CONRAD  ON  LIFE  AND  LETTERS 

Pennfield,  whose  many  services  to  those  in  Hke 
pHght  will  be  long  remembered.  But  the  hold  of 
this  paper  upon  the  reader  is  for  its  reminiscences 
and  its  descriptive  touches  of  that  great  North 
Sea  on  which  Mr.  Conrad  began  his  seafaring. 
As  he  sits  in  the  train  in  the  Liverpool  station. 
about  to  start,  he  recalls  his  first  arrival  as  a  boy 
of  nineteen  in  London  on  that  spot.  He  had 
come  off  of  one  ship  and  was  seeking  another  to 
ship  before  the  mast  to  Australia.  He  had  noth- 
ing but  the  fragment  of  a  map  of  London  to 
guide  him  to  an  obscure  "Dickenslike  nook  of 
London, "  he  calls  it,  there  to  find  the  man  who 
was  to  place  him.  And  he  tells  us  that  it  never 
occurred  to  him  to  seek  his  way  in  a  conveyance. 
Strange  contrast  between  this  foreign  lad,  un- 
known to  any  one  of  the  millions  in  the  great  sea 
of  humanity,  and  the  approved,  successful 
author  with  his  volumes  of  achievement,  his 
hosts  of  friends,  his  family  and  the  place  in  the 
world  which  he  has  made  his.  Truly,  some  trees 
wax  luxuriant  in  the  transplanting. 

Two  or  three  absorbing  papers  are  those  on 
various  aspects  of  the  loss  of  the  Titanic,  in  which 
the  expert  in  the  affairs  of  the  sea,  as  well  as  the 
humanitarian,  speaks  out.  Little  could  Mr. 
Conrad  have  known  that  what  man  inflicts  on 
man  was  to  sink  this  terrible  disaster  into  insignif- 
icance within  a  year  or  two.     But  it  is  in  such 

65 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

papers  as  "Well  Done"  or  "Tradition,"  in 
which  the  man  who  followed  the  sea  for  twenty 
years  tells  of  the  quality,  the  simplicity,  the 
courage  of  the  British  merchant  service  which  he 
knew  so  well,  it  is  in  these  that  we  taste  the 
Conrad  of  "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus."  The 
former  of  these  in  its  effort  to  explain  "this 
unholy  fascination"  of  the  sea,  with  its  story  of 
the  one  thief  whom  the  writer  had  ever  met  in 
the  service,  a  thief  less  through  dishonesty  than 
adventure;  the  finding  of  the  heart  of  the  sea- 
man's loyalty  in  service,  and  the  essence  of  manli- 
ness in  work,  these  are  fine  things,  finely  said. 
And  there  are  exhibits  of  rightness,  if  I  may  put 
it  so,  as  to  autocracy,  the  censorship  of  plays,  the 
after  life  and  what  not.  But  the  best  thing  about 
the  book — and  it  is  the  best  thing  that  can  be 
said  about  a  book — is  to  find  in  it  the  revelation 
of  a  man  thinking  manly  without  prejudice  or 
sophistications,  literary  or  social.  If  it  is  salt 
water  that  can  thus  clear  our  eyes  and  our  per- 
ceptions, would  that  more  of  us  were  baptizedinit. 


THEOPHRASTUS  IN  KANSAS 

I  HAVE  found  only  one  superfluous  adjective  in 
this  book — and  that  is  that  work-horse  or 
clothes-horse,  "admirable,"  sandwiched  be- 
tween "her"  and  "sex":  a  case,  so  to  speak,  of 
attraction  of  the  obvious.  Ordinarily  the  super- 
numerary adjectives  of  the  average  book,  excised 
and  gathered  together,  would  reduce  the  whole 
volume  about  ten  per  cent.  Any  conspicuous 
lack  of  the  superfluous,  if  we  are  so  lucky  as  any- 
where to  happen  upon  it,  we  are  apt  to  refer  to 
Yankee  reticence;  and  much  might  be  said  of  the 
brevity  of  reticence  and  also  of  the  barrenness  of 
a  soil  which  cannot  be  made  to  produce  much 
anyhow.  This  "Anthology"  shows  that  with 
other  excellences  cornered  in  the  markets  of  the 
moralities  by  the  Puritans,  brevity  may  flourish 
even  in  the  wide  spaces  of  Kansas.  In  point  of 
fact  artists  call  this  quality  by  a  better  term, 
economy  of  stroke;  and  economy  of  stroke  is  a 
notable  quality  in  Mr.  Howe's  "Another  Town." 
A  certain  eastern  professor  was  lecturing 
some  years  ago  in  literary  Indianapolis  and, 
asked  about  himself,  confessed  that  although 
caught  early  in  an  eddy  that  had  carried  his 
family  back  East  and  reversed  the  usual  flow 
westward,  he  was  actually  born  in  Indiana. 
Whereupon  an  enthusiastic  native  of  that  literary 

67 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

state  exclaimed:  "When  you  get  down  to  brass 
tacks,  all  these  here  lit'rary  fellers  hails  from 
Indiany. "  Edgar  Watson  Howe  was  born  in 
Indiana  and  got  his  schooling  in  Missouri,  thus 
resembling  Mark  Twain  in  the  most  important 
part  of  a  man's  education.  Mr.  Howe  is  no 
stranger  as  a  writer  to  such  as  keep  abreast  of  the 
times,  as  his  successful  books,  "Ventures  in 
Common  Sense"  and  "The  Story  of  a  Country 
Town,"  attest.  This  "Anthology  of  Another 
Town"  is  named  in  reference  to  the  book  just 
mentioned.  It  is  something  thus  to  have  put 
two  towns  on  the  map,  to  say  nothing  of 
Atchison  on  the  globe.  Mr.  Menken  says  that 
Howe  is  "America  incarnate,"  and,  like  Dad, 
Mr.  Menken  knows. 

The  "Anthology  of  Another  Town"  is  not  a 
story,  nor  a  collection  of  essays,  much  less  the 
disjointed  paragraphs  of  a  columnist.  Each 
item — which  word  better  expresses  it  than 
chapter,  or  section  (as  they  range  from  several 
pages  down  to  four  or  five  lines  of  prose  in  print) 
— each  item,  as  I  was  saying,  is  complete  in  itself 
and  might  stand  alone  anywhere.  But  there  is 
unity  in  tone,  manner  and  purpose  of  all  that 
completes  a  picture  despite  the  independence  of 
each  part.  In  fact  if  I  were  looking  for  a  term  of 
classification  I  should  revive  the  old  word 
"character,"   for    Mr.  Howe's  book;  only  the 

68 


THEOPHRASTUS  IN  KANSAS 

"character, "  from  its  original  in  Theophrastus  to 
Hall  and  Overbury  in  old  England,  was  usually 
more  in  the  nature  of  a  set  description,  a  bit  of 
portraiture  and  commonly  satirical  in  intent. 
Mr.  Howe  in  these  little  sketches  of  the  actual- 
ities and  trivialities  of  a  small  western  town  has 
contrived  to  put  off  satire  with  its  limitations  and 
to  rid  himself  of  all  the  literary  furbelows.  The 
result  makes  for  the  economy  of  stroke  of  which 
I  have  just  written;  it  produces  an  effect  some- 
times almost  bald  (the  accompanying  danger  of 
simplicity  carried  to  a  logical  conclusion);  but 
more  often  it  achieves  its  purpose  where  elab- 
oration would  fail.  Humor,  the  touch  of  pathos 
on  occasion,  a  faithfulness  to  verity  always — all 
these  things  are  incidental  and  arise  out  of  the 
subject:  never  are  they  thrust  into  it. 

For  example,  one  of  the  longer  "characters" 
tells  of  a  "city  journalist"  taken  on  in  the  office 
of  a  country  newspaper.  He  is  pitifully  incom- 
petent and  has  a  habit  of  wandering  away  from 
his  sixty-year-old  wife,  a  "physician,"  widow  of 
two  predecessors,  but  genuinely  fond  of  her  feck- 
less husband,  who  is  about  half  her  age.  At  last 
the  poor  fellow  dies,  and  out  of  respect  for  the 
widow's  grief  the  town  gives  the  deceased  a  good 
funeral,  in  which  coffin,  flowers,  bearers,  white 
gloves  and  all  are  donated.  One  of  the  pall- 
bearers  failing — he  was   a   lawyer   who   always 

69 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

promised  to  speak  on  public  occasions  and  always 
failed  to  appear — Sam  Kclscy,  the  new  mayor, 
was  pressed  into  that  service,  and  taking  com- 
mand, the  whole  thing  was  carried  to  the  last 
detail.  "The  casket  was  very  heavy,  and  it  was 
hard  work  getting  it  into  the  car,  but  finally  this 
was  accomplished,  and  the  flowers  placed  on  the 
casket.  Then  we  stood  around  in  solemn  silence 
for  a  moment,  before  departing,  and  Sam  Kelsey, 
with  his  hat  still  off,  wiped  a  lot  of  perspiration 
from  the  top  of  his  bald  head,  and  leaning  over  to 
me,  whispered  in  a  tender,  sympathetic  way: 
'Who  was  he.'^'  "  For  another  example,  take 
this,  which  I  quote  entire:  "Ben  Bradford, 
known  to  be  a  little  gay,  says  the  first  time  he 
kissed  a  woman  other  than  his  wife,  he  felt  as 
sneaking  as  he  did  when  he  first  began  buying  of 
Montgomery,  Ward  &  Co.  But  Ben  gradually 
became  hardened,  and  many  say  he  now  trades 
with  Sears-Roebuck,  too."  If  any  confirmed 
dweller  in  cities  does  not  understand  this,  let 
him  move  to  the  country,  and  he  will. 

In  a  very  entertaining  recent  book,  Air, 
Edson's  "Gentle  Art  of  Columning, "  it  is  main- 
tained, if  I  remember  rightly,  that  all  humor,  as 
well  as  all  wit,  is  referable  to  a  kind  of  malice  in 
us  that  delights  in  seeing  the  laugh  on  the  other 
fellow.  I  have  never  liked  this  idea  of  humor, 
and  with  Mr.  Edson's  pardon  will  say  that  I  do 

70 


THEOPHRASTUS  IN  KANSAS 

not  believe  it  as  to  all  humor.  And  I  would  cite 
both  Mr.  Howe's  "Towns"  as  illustrations  in 
point.  There  is  no  want  of  discernment  in  either 
of  them,  and  many  of  their  inhabitants  are  as 
hard,  as  wrong-headed  and  as  absurd,  well,  as  we 
are  ourselves.  The  college-bred  lawyer  who 
came  down  in  the  world  until  his  wife  kept  cows, 
of  whom  his  rival  said:  "If  he  ever  makes  me 
mad,  I'll  just  quit  taking  milk  of  him  and  starve 
him  to  death";  the  daughter  who  would  have  the 
blinds  down  of  nights  although  her  sick  old 
father  wanted  to  look  out  at  the  stars;  the 
slanderous  wife  who  invented  tales  of  her  de- 
serted husband's  wealth  and  niggardliness  and 
ruined  him — in  none  of  these  faithful  little 
sketches  of  Mr.  Howe  is  there  malice  or  unchar- 
itableness.  We  need  Mr.  Howe's  "Towns"  as  a 
corrective  of  the  horrid  "mortuaries"  of  Spoon 
River.  It  is  one  thing  to  detest  the  entire  human 
race  like  Swift;  it  is  another  to  laugh  at  men  and 
women,  and,  what  is  still  better,  to  laugh  with 
them.  Wit  and  humor,  with  their  outriders — to 
the  left,  satire,  lampoon  and  invective;  to  the 
right,  pathos  and  tenderness — have  always 
seemed  to  me  more  things  in  the  nature  of  the 
spectrum,  governed  to  the  left  with  the  light  rays 
of  the  head,  and  to  the  right  with  the  heat  rays  of 
the  heart.  Where  they  dissolve  the  one  into  the 
other,  it  might  be  difficult  often  to  say,  but  we 

71 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

know  when  we  are  warmed,  and  we  are  aware 
when  only  the  flash  Hght  has  been  turned  on. 

Mr.  Masters  once  confessed,  I  beHeve,  that  it 
was  the  Greek  anthology  which  inspired  "Spoon 
River"  from  the  very  irony  of  mortuary  in- 
scription. I  wonder  if  Mr.  Howe  knows  old 
Theophrastus,  with  his  "simple  method,  plain 
black  and  white, "  with  his  language,  "  the  simplest 
possible,  neither  bookish  nor  doctrinal  nor  con- 
troversial *  *  *  He  who  relies  for  his  effect 
on  the  simplicity  of  truth  *  *  *  and  when  you 
laugh,  it  is  at  humor  in  its  last  element  of  simple 
incongruity."  This  is  recent  learned  criticism  of 
Theophrastus,  not  the  present  reviewer's  effort 
as  to  Mr.  Howe.  But  'twill  serve.  "How  much 
one  gets  from  a  little  talk,  to  be  sure, "  says  the 
"Loquacious  Man  " — Mr.  Howe  would  have  called 
him  Jim  Walker — "and  his  children  say  to  him 
at  bedtime:  'Papa,  chatter  to  us,  that  we  may 
fall  asleep."  This  is  Theophrastus,  not  Mr. 
Howe.  "We  haven't  a  daily  paper  in  our  town. " 
says  Mr.  Howe,  not  Theophrastus,  "but  really 
we  don't  greatly  miss  one,  owing  to  Mr.  Stevens, 
the  milkman."  And  just  one  more:  "Sandy 
McPherson,  the  barber,  says  he  charges  five 
dollars  for  shaving  a  dead  man  because  he  is 
compelled  to  throw  away  the  razor  he  used. 
But  how  do  we  know  he  throws  the  razor  away.^" 


CARL  SANDBURG— REBEL 

I  HAVE  tried  to  read  Carl  Sandburg's  new  book 
"Smoke  and  Steel,"  without  predispositions 
and  prejudices.  I  have  tried  to  forget  the  laws 
and  rules  of  the  arts.  I  have  put  aside  prosody 
as  inapplicable,  rhetoric  as  superfluous,  grammar 
and  the  deft  usages  of  cultivated  speech  as  imper- 
tinent, and  I  hope  that  I  have  achieved  an  honest 
detachment.  Some  of  us  are  born  rebels.  We 
are  not  content  to  walk  in  the  steps  of  other  men; 
we  want  our  own  ways,  and  it  is  our  right.  Some 
of  us  find  in  accepted  art,  as  in  accepted  science, 
chains  of  the  past;  in  the  accepted  usages  of  men, 
chains  of  the  present.  And  we  throw  overboard 
likewise  the  accepted  explanations  of  much  in 
life,  for  example,  and  in  religion,  lest  we  forge 
chains  once  more  for  the  future.  The  intellectual 
rebel,  the  rebel  in  art,  is  a  fascinating  figure 
wherever  we  meet  him.  Marlowe  blaspheming, 
not  high  heaven,  as  we  used  to  be  taught,  but 
the  orthodoxy  of  his  age,  which  is  not  the  ortho- 
doxy of  ours;  Byron  scandalously  shocking  Mrs. 
Grundy;  Walt  Whitman,  glorious  breaker  of 
images,  plaster,  bisque,  bronze  and  marble — these 
are  some  of  the  refreshing  rebels  of  literature. 

The  rebel  may  be  a  Prometheus  and  bring 
down  the  fire  of  heaven  for  the  good  of  men  and 
not  merely  upon  his  own  devoted  head;  or  the 

73 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

rebel  may  be  only  a  naughty  boy  who  won't  wash 
his  face  and  go  to  school.  Do  not  jump  at  con- 
clusions, dear  reader;  I  have  not  classified  Mr. 
Sandburg  yet,  and  I  may  not  succeed  when  I  try, 
I  once  knew  a  small  would-be  poetical  rebel  who 
showed  his  insubordination  in  the  color  of  his 
socks  and  the  gorgeousness  of  his  neckties.  He 
has  posed  now — and  imposed— for  a  good  many 
years,  but  I  still  call  him  a  small  rebel  because, 
whatever  may  be  the  fact,  he  leaves  with  me  an 
impression  of  insincerity,  in  which,  if  I  wrong 
him,  I  am  heartily  sorry.  One  feels  of  him, 
as  the  congregation  of  Laurence  Sterne  is  said 
to  have  felt,  in  doubt  as  to  what  he  is  likely  to  do 
next  to  surprise,  if  not  to  scandalize,  in  doubt 
except  that  it  will  be  unclerical;  his  wig  whipped 
off  and  thrown  in  your  face  or  a  pas  de  seul  in 
the  pulpit. 

Of  one  thing  I  am  very  certain  as  to  Mr. 
Sandburg.  He  is  very  much  in  earnest,  and  I 
like  him  for  that.  Moreover,  there  is  nothing 
weak  or  mawkish  about  him.  He  is  also  not  out 
with  a  shotgun  after  his  readers.  His  pieces — I 
am  not  ready  to  call  them  poems  yet — ^have,  too, 
much  the  air  of  being  overheard  rather  than 
heard,  and  this  is  a  great  thing  to  be  able  to  say, 
even  of  a  poet.  Now,  when  a  man  is  without 
pose,  in  earnest  and  manly,  you  respect  him, 
even  although  you  may  not  admire  his  manners. 

74 


CARL  SANDBURG— REBEL 

And  in  using  this  word  I  am  sadly  aware  that  I 
am  introducing  something  trivial  in  the  face  of 
what  Carlyle  used  to  delight  in  calling  the 
eternal  Verities — the  capitalized  Verities.  Mr. 
Sandburg  is  too  virile  to  be  insincere;  he  is  so 
virile,  indeed,  that  at  times  he  is  brutal.  He 
seems  one  of  those  who,  seeking  for  strength,  find 
it  best  typified  in  a  blow  between  the  eyes;  who, 
looking  for  truth,  discover  it  in  nakedness  aware 
that  it  is  nakedness;  who,  searching  for  an  escape 
from  affectation,  find  sincerity  and  integrity 
only  in  the  conduct  and  the  language  of  the  slums 
and  worse.  For  example,  speaking  of  the  ex- 
quisite musical  composer,  Grieg,  Mr.  Sandburg 
tells  us:  "Grieg  being  dead,  we  may  speak  of 
him  and  his  art.  Grieg  being  dead,  we  can  talk 
about  whether  he  was  any  good  or  not.  Grieg 
being  with  Ibsen,  Bjornson,  Lief  Ericson  and  the 
rest,  Grieg  being  dead  does  not  care  a  hell's  hoot 
what  we  say.  Morning,  Spring,  Anitra's  Dance. 
He  dreams  them  at  the  doors  of  new  stars." 
This  is  the  "poem"  complete  except  for  meas- 
ured printing.  The  concluding  thought,  though 
no  original  one,  is  a  fine  human  sentiment.  But 
why  smash  it  with  the  incongruous  brutality 
of  a  "hell's  hoot".'^  Norway,  we  are  told  at  the 
moment,  is  much  disturbed  over  a  bit  of  Amer- 
ican  desecration   of  this   very   music   of   "Peer 

75 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Gynt"  into  ragtime.    Is  Mr.  Sandburg's  "hell's 
hoot"  any  better.? 

In  every  work  of  art,  picture,  piece  of  music 
or  bit  of  writing  there  is  obviously  the  idea  and 
the  execution  of  it.  Some  people  think  that  it  is 
in  the  perfect  union  of  these  two  things  that 
successful  art  consists.  Mr.  Sandburg  is  strong 
in  the  originality  of  the  ironic  and  the  grotesque. 
Take  "The  Alley  Rats,"  whose  jargon  classifies 
whiskers  as  "lilacs,  galways,  feather  dusters," 
and  who  are  appropriately  "croaked"  one  day 
at  "a  necktie  party."  Or  the  irony  of  the  idea 
"they  (that  is,  we)  all  want  to  play  Hamlet"; 
the  whimsicality  of  the  query.  "How  does  a 
hangman  behave  at  home.?"  or  the  daring 
thought  of  God  as  a  crapshooter:  "God  is  Luck 
and  luck  is  God;  we  are  all  bones  the  High 
Thrower  rolled;  some  are  two  spots,  some  double 
sixes."  This  is  as  grotesque  and  compelling  as 
the  dance  of  death  itself.  At  times  the  irony,  if 
lighter,  is  none  the  less  admirable,  as  in  "The 
Sins  of  Kalamazoo,"  which  "are  neither  scarlet 
nor  crimson,"  but  "a  convict  gray,  a  dishwater 
drab";  or  the  manufactured  wooden  gods  which 
answer  prayers  and  make  rain  quite  "as  well  as 
any  little  tin  god."  If  we  ask  ourselves  honestly 
could  these  keen,  bitter,  odd,  contorted  ideas  be 
better  conveyed  more  musically,  metrically  or  in 
a   less   bald   and   direct  manner,   the  answer   is 

76 


CARL  SANDBURG— REBEL 

"no."  Mr.  Sandburg's  manner  suits  his  matter, 
even  in  its  colloquialism,  its  slang,  its  short  un- 
musical phrase  and  scorn  of  the  graces. 

However,  Mr.  Sandburg  is  not  without 
imagery,  most  of  it  remarkably  original,  some  of 
it  remarkably  fine — the  river  described  as  "the 
upper  twist  of  a  written  question  mark,"  "the 
white  cauliflower  faces  of  miners'  wives"  await- 
ing their  husbands,  purple  martens  "slinging 
ciphers"  and  "sliding  figure  eights"  in  their 
"sheaths  of  satin  blue."  But  more  commonly 
they  are  misshapen  into  something  grotesque. 
A  certain  woman  is  "turned  to  a  memorial  of 
salt  looking  at  the  lights  of  a  forgotten  city"; 
two  lovers  are  described  as  "chisel-pals";  the 
"East  shakes  a  baby  toe  at  tomorrow,"  and  on 
the  verge  assuredly  of  incoherence:  "There  was 
a  late  autumn  cricket  and  two  smouldering  moun- 
tain sunsets  under  the  valley  roads  of  her  eyes. " 

By  far  the  best  poem — there  I  have  called  it  a 
poem — of  the  volume  is  "Four  Preludes  on  Play- 
things of  the  Wind, "  a  cumbrous  title  equivalent 
to  All  is  Vanity.  Here  we  have  vivid  imagery: 
"The  woman  named  Tomorrow,"  with  "a  hair- 
pin in  her  teeth,  doing  her  hair";  the  cedar  gold- 
bound  doors  of  "the  greatest  city  that  ever  was" 
and  "the  golden  girls"  who  sing  its  greatness. 
Then  the  wind  and  the  rain  and  the  crows,  the 
rats  and  the  lizards.    It  is  notable  that  much  of 

11 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

the  effect  of  this  variation  on  a  theme  at 
least  as  old  as  Solomon  is  here  produced  by 
what  Miss  Amy  Lowell  is  fond  of  dwelling  on — 
as  if  there  were  anything  that  is  new  in  the  "new 
poetry" — to  wit,  as  "the  return,"  here  almost  a 
refrain.  Some  of  the  phrases  almost  fall  into  the 
regular  cadence  of  that  unhallowed  thing,  verse. 
Strange  it  is  and  most  happy  that  genuine 
emotion  often  restores  to  the  rebel  and  the  theorist 
utterance  which  he  has  refused,  as  the  presence  of 
death  may  bring  back  the  atheist  to  God.  Mr. 
Sandburg  is  to  be  reckoned  with.  That  he  has 
justified  the  repudiation  of  the  nine  muses  and 
the  denial  of  all  the  graces  is  yet  to  be  shown. 


ALFRED  NOYES  AND  A  GREAT 
POETIC  TRADITION 

THIS  is  a  third  volume  of  the  collected  poetry 
of  Mr.  Noyes,  assembling  the  work  other- 
wise published  since  1913,  together  with  "some 
new  poems  hitherto  unpublished. "  Introduction 
and  acclaim  are  things  long  since  passed,  by  Mr. 
Noyes.  Secure  in  his  acknowledged  rank  among 
those  who  are  carrying  on  the  great  tradition  of 
English  poetry,  it  is  only  for  the  subaltern  critic 
to  salute  him  as  he  passes,  one  of  the  august 
group  which  leads.  No  more  than  just  attained 
to  middle  life,  Mr.  Noyes  has  an  enviable 
amount  of  achievement  behind  him  from  his  first 
volume,  "The  Loom  of  Years, "  published  when 
he  was  but  twenty- two  years  of  age,  to  "The 
Elfin  Artist"  and  this  latest  volume.  Lyric,  epic 
(as  witnessed  in  the  noble  "Drake"),  narrative, 
the  poetry  of  nature  and  of  dainty,  fairy  lore, 
sentiment,  humor,  feeling,  all  come  naturally, 
facilely  and  eff"ectively  from  his  fertile  pen.  Not 
only  does  Mr.  Noyes  meet  adequately  and  grace- 
fully every  claim  of  the  moment  upon  him  for 
that  expression  of  occasional  sentiment  on  men 
and  events  which  has  always  been  recognized  as 
one  of  the  anticipated  functions  of  the  accepted 
popular  British  poet,  but  he  does  these  difficult 
things,  as  if  there  were  nothing  in  the  world  easier 

79 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

to  do,  and  he  does  them,  successfully  voicing 
ideas,  feelings  and  sentiments  in  which  all  can 
concur.  Not  the  least  pleasing  and  interesting  is 
it  that  the  Sussex  poet  who  surprised  Clayton 
Hamilton,  now  a  good  many  years  ago,  by  the 
confession  that  he  had  not  been  abroad,  not  even 
to  France,  which  lay  almost  in  view,  should  since 
have  come  to  us,  and,  in  the  relations  which  he 
has  established  at  Princeton  and  the  many  ties 
and  friendships  which  are  now  his  with  America, 
should  have  drawn  closer  those  bonds  of  amity 
and  brotherhood  which  bind  the  two  great 
Anglo-Saxon  peoples  in  one. 

Language  is  a  stronger  tie  than  treaties;  and  a 
common  literature  more  enduring  than  cement. 
Wells,  Galsworthy,  Bennett,  Barrie,  Masefield, 
Noyes — these  are  contemporary  names,  with 
many  more  as  well  known  among  us  as  in  Lon- 
don. A  decade  almost  before  the  war  the  late 
Hamilton  Mabie  introduced  us  to  an  American 
reprint  of  poems  by  Mr.  Noyes,  since  when  the 
poet  has  become  an  international  figure,  express- 
ing again  and  again  in  form  of  beauty  those 
larger  and  more  universal  truths  which  mark  the 
acquiescence  and  unity  of  two  great  nations. 
To  the  carping  ignorant  who  affirm  from  time  to 
time  with  a  Philistine  leer  that  poetry  is  dead, 
there  is  no  better  answer  than  the  sale  in  many 

80 


ALFRED  NOYES  AND  A  GREAT  TRADITION 

editions  of  the  poetry  of  men  such  as  Mr.  Mase- 
field  and  Mr.  Noyes.  I  recall  how  a  few  years 
ago,  when  the  former  was  advertised  to  read  his 
poetry  In  the  halls  of  an  Eastern  University, 
the  concourse  of  those  who  came  to  hear  him  was 
so  great  that  adjournment  was  made  to  a  neigh- 
boring church,  which  Itself  could  scarcely  hold 
the  crowd.  Mr.  Noyes  has  upon  more  than  one 
occasion  experienced  a  similar  welcome  and  held 
his  audience  with  the  sheer  force  of  powerful 
verse  and  the  charm  of  a  personality  which  ex- 
plains at  once  his  grace,  his  forthrightness  and 
the  significance  of  his  popular  appeal. 

I  have  written  above  of  Mr.  Noyes  as  one  of 
those  favored  poets,  who  Is  acclaimed  by  his 
contemporaries  as  worthy  to  carry  on  the  great 
tradition  of  English  poetry.  In  that  mighty  line 
walked  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  each  in  his  day, 
the  spokesman  of  his  time  In  its  acceptance,  its 
aspirations  and  Its  hopes,  glorified  as  a  herald 
is  decked  out  in  brave  uniform,  but  none  the  less 
a  true  voice  of  his  time.  In  that  august  line 
came  Dryden  and  even  Milton,  rebel  In  part 
though  he  was,  and  later  Pope,  and.  In  his  time, 
Wordsworth  and  Tennyson,  and.  In  our  America, 
Longfellow,  to  mention  no  more.  Of  course, 
there  have  been  many  lesser  men  who,  each  in 
his  way,  has  helped  to  carry  on  the  poetry  of  the 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

centre,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  the  poetry  which  is 
essentially  the  expression  of  the  spirit  of  its  own 
age  without  being  in  any  wise  impaired  in  the 
sincerity  with  which  it  expresses  likewise  the 
man  who  writes  it.  If  I  may  venture  on  a  trite 
old  figure,  this  great  stream  of  literature,  which 
has  come  down  to  us  from  the  runnels  and  trick- 
lings  of  early  ages,  bears  much  stately  and 
accepted  commerce  on  its  steady  current,  much 
that  floats  securely  amid  stream.  Poets  who  are 
in  the  great  tradition  of  English  letters  escape 
the  rapids  of  the  rebels,  the  shallows  of  ineptitude, 
the  backwaters  of  imitation,  and  the  bogs  and 
morasses  of  eccentricity,  where  nothing  floats. 
To  leave  figures,  such  are  in  the  line  of  an 
orderly  evolution,  they  are  not  freaks;  they  do 
not  startle,  surprise  or  scandalize;  as  Taine  said 
of  Tennyson,  "They  will  pervert  nobody." 
They  are  safe  and  orthodox,  each  with  an  ortho- 
doxy of  his  time  which,  we  should  be  careful  to 
remember,  is  not  the  orthodoxy  necessarily  of  all 
time.  I  cannot  feel  that  it  is  the  function  of  art 
at  all  times  to  stun  and  amaze.  The  certainty 
and  restfulness  of  Jane  Austen  is  worth  all  the 
novels  of  terror  of  her  age  baled  into  one  huge 
packet.  And  it  comes  almost  as  a  balm  and  an 
alleviation  in  these  days  of  topsy-turvydom  to 
read  a  poet  who  believes  unaffectedly  in  God  and 

82 


ALFRED  NOYES  AND  A  GREAT  TRADITION 

finds   it   unnecessary   to   punctuate   that   belief 
with  a  big  base  drum. 

With  all  Mr.  Noyes'  felicity  and  variety  of 
theme,  his  adequacy,  the  saneness  and  justice  of 
his  attitude  toward  life  and  the  elevated  quality 
of  his  sentiments,  scarcely  anything  is  more 
striking  than  the  technical  excellence  of  his  art. 
In  this  day  of  jazz  music,  future  perfectist  art 
and  spineless  verse,  it  is  a  boon  to  have  this 
skilful  and  consummate  vindicator  in  practice 
of  the  time-honored  graces  and  beauties  of 
poetry  which  Mr.  Noyes  insists  on  treating  as  an 
art  in  words.  Like  every  true  artist,  he 
has  extended  tradition  while  observing  it, 
and  he  fully  deserves  all  the  praise  that  he  has 
received  for  his  originality  and  inventiveness  in 
new  stanzas,  his  novel  experiments  (such  as 
rhymes  on  the  first  word,  single  word  refrains 
and  the  like),  and  a  frequently  novel  and  clever 
use  of  repetition  and  refrain.  Above  all  this 
consummate  metrist  has  preserved  the  melody  of 
our  beautiful  English  tongue,  giving  it  again  and 
again  new  effects  and  charmingly  novel  cadences. 
If  it  is  pleasant  to  turn  from  the  cacophony  of 
much  of  our  free  verse  and  other  to  the  music  of 
Mr.  Noyes,  it  is  no  less  a  delight  to  come  out  of 
the  gloom,  the  black  significance  and  enigmatic 
depths  of  some  of  our  contemporary  poets  into 

83 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

the  sunshine  which  illumes  the  sparkling  world  of 
Mr.  Noyes'  wholesome  fancy.  Come,  let  us  put 
our  questionings  away  and  believe  that  there  are 
fairies  in  the  forests  and  the  glades  of  old  Eng- 
land at  the  least,  that  there  are  things  of  beauty 
in  this  world  of  ours  and  that  God  is  not  remote 
in  his  heavens,  sitting  austere,  but  is  manifest 
in  joy  and  goodness  in  the  hearts  of  men. 


MR.  MASEFIELD  AND  THE 
KEY  POETIC. 

IT  is  said  that  everybody — that  is  everybody 
who  cares  about  things  of  the  mind — carries 
about  with  him  somewhere,  hke  a  bunch  of  keys, 
certain  definitions  which  he  uses,  as  occasion 
may  offer,  to  unlock  the  avenues  of  thought  or 
discourse.  Sometimes  these  keys  are  remarkably 
hard  and  definite,  good  each  for  one  little  door 
and  for  nothing  else;  sometimes  they  are  fewer  in 
number,  adjustable  in  various  locks,  assuming  at 
last,  in  the  truly  cultivated  and  liberalized,  the 
qualities  of  a  master  key  which  can  open  all 
locks.  To  vary  the  figure,  he  who  does  not  hold 
many  of  his  definitions — even  of  very  familiar 
things — in  solution,  under  advisement,  ready  to 
be  adapted  to  growth  in  the  world  and  in  him- 
self, will  soon  be  without  a  key  to  unlock  any- 
thing. There  was  a  time  within  the  memory  of 
those  still  alive  when  there  were  grave  doubts  in 
the  minds  of  many  as  to  whether  Browning  was 
writing  poetry  or  something  for  which  a  new 
name  must  be  found,  or  whether  the  Wagnerian 
"cacophony,"  as  some  called  it,  was  really  music 
and  not  something  else.  And  yet  how  far  have 
we  passed  beyond  all  this  in  de-versified  poetry, 
demelodized  music  and  denicotined  cigars,  to 
carry  our  denials  no  further. 

85 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

But  it  is  not  along  this  line  that  the  poetry  of 
Mr.  Masefield  gives  us  pause;  for  no  Keats  was 
ever  more  enthralled  to  beauty  than  is  Mr.  Mase- 
field, and  the  music  of  verse,  with  all  the  old  de- 
vices, often  astonishingly  and  daringly  developed, 
is  to  him  as  the  apple  of  his  eye.  But  there  is 
something  more.  It  is  possible  to  love  beauty 
selectively  and,  trusting  the  eye,  choose  only  that 
which  is  pleasing  in  theme  and  agreeable  to 
dwell  on.  Mr.  Masefield  is  a  far  more  significant 
artist  than  this  in  his  facing  of  the  realities,  in  his 
acceptance  of  a  subject  in  its  difficulties  to  dis- 
cover the  deeper,  the  more  significant  beauty 
which  it  is  the  function  of  the  true  artist  to  reveal. 
The  man  who  has  written  of  the  brutal  realities  of 
the  forecastle  and  the  prize  fight^ — ^as  Mr.  Mase- 
field has  written  in  ^'Dauber"  and  in  "The  Ever- 
lasting Mercy";  of  sensuality  and  murder  itself, 
as  in  "The  Widow  of  the  Bye  Street" — is  no 
effeminate  devotee  of  mere  beauty.  But  be  it 
noticed  that  Mr.  Masefield's  method  in  all  his 
realism  is  that  of  an  artist  keenly  alive  not  only 
to  the  obvious  outward  truth  of  line  and  contour, 
but  to  that  inner  truth  of  the  spirit  which  is 
worth  all  the  small  arts  of  taste  and  prettiness 
rolled  into  one. 

I  recall  a  pleasantly  disputatious  friend  who 
carried  about  with  him  a  portentous  bunch  of 
the  keys  of  definition  and  jingled  them  inces- 

86 


MR.  MASEFIELD  AND  THE  KEY  POETIC 

sandy.  He  was  always  getting  down  to  brass 
tacks  and  he  usually  stayed  there.  One  day  the 
argument  recurred  to  "Well  now  what,  after  all, 
is  poetry?"  and  a  famous  old  poem  on  Winter 
became  the  subject  of  illustration.  In  that  poem, 
which  contains  that  "coughing,"  it  will  be  re- 
membered, which  "drowned  the  parson's  saw," 
the  refrain  runs:  "While  greasy  Joan  doth  keel 
the  pot,"  an  idea,  homely,  familiar  and,  as  the 
older  critics  would  have  said,  "low,"  My  friend 
was  willing  to  accept  the  word  "keel"  as  archaic 
and,  being  out  of  use,  therefore  strange  enough 
to  be  poetic.  He  objected  to  "greasy"  as  des- 
criptive enough,  but  unpoetical,  and  agreed 
with  the  old  critics  that  "pot"  was  simply  "low.' 
Another  line  of  the  famous  old  poem  really 
incensed  him.  It  runs:  "And  Marian's  nose 
looks  red  and  raw."  Was  Marian  remarkable  in 
this?  No.  Was  it  not  vividly  descriptive?  Yes. 
But  then  the  subject  was  so  unpoetical.  Winter, 
unpoetical!  Obviously  the  poetic  key  of  my 
friend  of  the  brass  tacks  would  not  unlock  much. 
We  have  yet  to  learn  with  any  degree  of  con- 
viction that  beauty  is  not  art  unless  that  beauty 
be  significant;  that  mere  significance  is  not  art 
unless  that  significance  be  raised  by  a  recog- 
nition of  its  inherent  beauty  and  harmony  into  the 
region  of  art.  A  multiplication  table  is  significant, 
very  significant;  and  so,  alas!  is  an  account  book. 

87 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Now,  Mr.  Masefield  is  one  of  those  rare  poets 
who  establishes  in  the  best  of  his  work  an  equili- 
brium, so  to  speak,  between  the  significance  of 
reality  and  that  ideality  which  is  the  essence  of 
beauty.  There  are  passages  in  "Dauber,"  for 
example,  the  wretched  anemic  lad  before  the 
mast,  enamored  of  color,  in  the  supreme  mo- 
ment, a  hero — there  are  passages  as  imaginative 
as  "The  Lay  of  the  Ancient  Mariner"  and  as 
realistic  as  Jack  London;  and  the  impression  is 
that  of  poetry,  not  because,  as  in  the  former,  we 
trespass  into  the  supernatural,  but  because 
of  realization  of  the  realities  in  terms  of  the 
beautiful. 

"Right  Royal"  is  the  story  of  a  steeplechase. 
This  is  nothing  very  new.  The  Greek  poet  Pindar 
established  an  immortal  reputation  on  the 
commemoration  of  athletic  events.  But  "Right 
Royal"  is  a  narrative  of  a  singularly  compelling 
nature.  I  did  not  want  to  leave  it  until  the  v/in- 
ning  post  was  passed.  The  go,  the  whirl  the 
picturesqueness  of  it  all  is  delightful  and  the 
effect,  with  all  its  detail  of  the  small  actualities, 
could  not  have  been  achieved  save  by  the  lifting 
power  of  poetry.  I  cannot  think  of  it  in  free 
verse,  for  example.  For  where  would  be  the 
rhythm  that  beats  with  the  clatter  of  hoofs  in 
which,  be  it  remarked,  there  is  a  certain  regu- 
larity in  life  if  ever  a  race  is  won.^    The  picture 


MR.  MASEFIELD  AND  THE  KEY  POETIC 

of  the  concourse  and  crowd,  of  the  stables,  the 
stablemen,  the  costermongers,  the  "bookies," 
even  the  negro  minstrels  and  sellers  of  oranges, 
is  vividly  successful  and  daring.  And  here  let 
me  break  a  lance  in  a  small  matter  with  some  of 
the  critics  who  object  to  Mr.  Masefield's  au- 
dacious rhymes,  some  of  them  mere  assonance, 
like  "disposes — knows  his,"  or  "offense — ^Testa- 
ments." What  matters  it  if  a  veritably  artistic 
effect  is  produced  and  not  destroyed  by  these 
risque  feats  of  daring.^  There  is  nothing  unper- 
missible  in  art,  which,  like  rebellion,  is  to  be 
judged  alone  by  its  success.  Of  course,  if  you  do 
not  succeed  you  richly  deserve  hanging  and 
usually  get  it.  No  one  who  has  heard  Mr.  Mase- 
field  tell  one  of  his  delightful  tales  of  extravagant 
humor  and  ingenuity  could  raise  the  question  as 
to  whether  these  feats  on  the  border  of  the 
grotesque  are  conscious  or  not. 

"Enslaved  and  Other  Poems,"  contains 
many  fine  things.  I  like  "The  Lemmings,"  who 
come  "westward  over  the  snow"  seeking  food 
and  "some  calm  place 

Where  one  could  taste  God's  quiet  and  be  fond 
With  the  little  beauty  of  a  human  face. 
But  now  the  land  is  drowned,  yet   still   we  press 
Westward,  in  search,  to  death,  to  nothingness. 

But  the  masterpiece  of  these  two  volumes  is  the 
tremendous  ballad   of  the    supernatural,    "The 

89 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Hounds  of  Hell,"  tuneful,  grotesque,  powerful, 
with  the  vigor  of  reality  with  all  its  diablerie  of 
the  supernatural.  It  is  not  to  be  spoiled  by 
blabbing  as  to  what  it  is  about;  for,  like  all  art 
that  is  really  worth  while,  it  can  be  conveyed  in 
no  wise  except  its  own  and  defies  description, 
epitome  or  any  other  short  cut  to  an  inferior 
understanding. 


AN  OLD  MYTH  REVITALIZED. 

"  A  ^^  what  are  you  painting  now?"  said 
xjL    Mr.  Bounder  to  his  friend,  the  artist. 

"A  portrait  of  Cleopatra  was  the  reply." 

"A  portrait  of  Cleopatra.^  Why  I  thought 
that  that  old  girl  had  had  her  picture  taken  long 
ago." 

"Oh  yes,  she  was  taken  and  retaken  often 
enough  in  life;  and  you  may  take  this  remark  in 
any  way  you  like,  but " 

Here  the  artist  broke  down.  What  is  the  use 
of  trying  to  explain  to  a  Bounder  the  immortality 
of  a  great  subject.^  How  can  you  get  him  to  see 
the  difference  between  "getting  through"  with 
fractions,  both  vulgar  and  proper,  once  and  for 
all,  and  the  circumstance  that  one  never  "gets 
through"  with  Beethoven  or  the  great  poets 
whose  works,  being  art  and  not  knowledge,  are 
permanent,  things  to  live  in,  not  like  the  sciences, 
be  they  great  or  little,  things  to  pass  through. 
Wherefore  to  Mr.  Bounder  the  title  of  Mr. 
Robinson's  book  will  be  a  sufficient  deterrent;  for 
what  have  Bounders  to  do  with  Lancelots  or 
Camelots.^  Their  business  is  with  corner  lots 
and  job  lots. 

Among  the  inheritances  of  this  undeserving 
race  of  ours  it  may  well  be  questioned  if  there  is 
any  one  so  precious  as  myths,  those  stories  of  old 

91 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

time  which  come  down  the  ages,  gathering  on  the 
way,  new  artistic  beauty  in  variable  form  and  a 
novel  and  deeper  significance.  The  power  to  con- 
struct myths  is  the  measure  of  a  people's  men- 
tality; for  the  myth,  in  religion,  tradition  and 
song,  is  the  veritable  expression  of  the  race,  the 
voice  of  the  folk.  Inferior  peoples  are  mythically 
voiceless,  or,  when  they  speak,  give  us  crudity. 
Great  peoples  have  always  been  vocal  in  their 
myths,  about  which  the  least  important  thing  is 
the  actual  facts  out  of  which  they  have  grown. 
Take  the  splendid  myth  of  the  magnificence  of 
Solomon,  king  of  kings.  The  actualities  tell  us 
that  he  was  the  chief  of  a  small  principality 
forming  the  corridor  connecting  two  great  em- 
pires, to  one  at  least  of  which  he  paid  tribute; 
and  as  to  the  marvellous  temple  of  Solomon,  it 
appears  to  have  covered  a  city  lot  of  some  lOO 
feet  by  50  at  the  most.  We  shall  not  inquire  into 
the  wisdom  of  him  who  took  unto  himself  so 
many  wives.  But  the  myth  of  Solomon,  the 
wise  and  magnificent,  is  a  tribute  to  the  patriot- 
ism, the  imaginative  power  and  poetic  ideals  of 
the  Hebrew  race.  The  glory  of  the  wisdom  of 
Solomon,  like  the  splendor  of  his  temple,  has 
blazed  down  through  the  ages;  it  typifies  for  us 
the  ancient  Hebrew  people,  not  in  their  paltry 
actualities,  but  in  their  ideals  and  aspirations. 
So  the  heroic  age  of  Greece  is  the  "  Iliad, "  not  the 

92 


AN  OLD  MYTH  REVITALIZED 

"history"  of  the  petty  squabbles  of  a  few  small 
chieftains  over  a  stolen  woman;  and  the  bar- 
barity, superstition  and  sordidness  of  the  middle 
ages  as  poverty-stricken  historians  are  con- 
strained by  "facts"  to  reconstruct  them,  rise  up 
into  beauty  and  pathos  and  immortality  in 
the  "Mort  D'Arthur"  and  the  "Chanson  de 
Roland." 

Another  thing  about  the  myth  is  that  it  is 
never  outworn;  but  told  and  retold  is  adaptable 
to  all  time.  Take  just  this  old  story  of  Lancelot, 
told  once  more  so  beautifully,  so  directly,  so 
novelly,  by  this  American  poet.  Like  all  true 
myths,  it  is  of  imperishable  material,  and  as  such 
may  be  sung  from  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  and 
Wace  to  Tennyson,  William  Morris  and  Swin- 
burne, and  now  again  by  Mr.  Robinson,  and  yet 
ever  be  new.  The  power  of  this  great  romance  of 
chivalry  to  inspire  the  poets  is  amazing  the  more 
so  as  it  inspires  them  in  so  many  different  ways. 
The  intricate  patterning  of  Spenser  with  its 
underlying  allegory;  the  refined,  somewhat  color- 
less but  beautiful,  sentimentalizing  of  Tennyson; 
the  pre-Raphaelite  color  and  sensuousness,  not 
always  intellectually  sustained;  the  robust  her- 
oic-barbaric, Christian-heathen  mysticism  of 
Wagnerian  saga — all  these  things  are  the  inspir- 
ation of  the  mythology  of  chivalry  which  centres 
in  King  Arthur.     The  poets  have  always  been 

93 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

attracted  to  the  subject.  "For  a  heroic  poem," 
said  old  Ben  Jonson,  "there  is  no  such  ground  as 
King  Arthur's  fiction."  And  Milton  only  gave 
up  this  topic  for  "Paradise  Lost"  after  a  long 
entertainment  of  it. 

Mr.  Robinson's  "Lancelot"  is  a  compara- 
tively brief  narrative,  or  perhaps  better,  a  semi- 
dramatic  poem;  for  most  of  the  story  is  unfolded 
in  dialogue  of  a  peculiarly  direct  and  limpid  dic- 
tion, howsoever  the  thought  is  at  times  deep,  if 
not  subtle.  A  swift  and  remarkably  mono- 
syllabic blank  verse,  of  great  freedom  in  phrasing 
but  absolutely  metrical,  is  the  fitting  medium  for 
this  rapid  and  living  discourse.  The  story  deals 
with  the  belated  discovery,  almost  forced  upon 
him,  by  King  Arthur  of  the  relations  of  Lancelot 
and  Guinevere,  the  queen;  her  rescue  from  burn- 
ing at  the  stake  for  her  unchastity  by  Lancelot, 
in  accomplishing  which  he  is  driven,  though  un- 
knowing, to  kill  two  brothers  of  his  friend, 
Gawaine.  The  story  concludes  with  the  last  meet- 
ing of  the  lovers  in  the  monastery  at  Glastonbury 
with  Lancelot's  renunciation  and  departure  into 
the  night  in  search  of  the  Light.  But  these  events 
are  not  Mr.  Robinson's  theme,  which  is  not  re- 
duceable  thus  to  its  elemental  "facts."  The 
interplay  of  human  emotion  in  beings,  swept 
hither  and  thither  by  passions  and  happenings, 
alternately    controlled    and    uncontrolled,    in  a 

94 


AN  OLD  MYTH  REVITALIZED 

world  predestined,  but  to  what  extent  we  know 
not — this  is  Mr.  Robinson's  theme,  and  with  it  is 
developed  the  innate  nobility  of  man,  however 
weak  and  the  sport  of  time.  Lancelot  is  a  finely 
conceived  creation,  strong,  individual,  magnani- 
mous, yet  human. 

I  have  no  objection  to  allegorical  poetry,  if 
you  do  not  attempt  to  interpret  the  allegory. 
Indeed,  allegory  is  best  left  to  the  kind  of  people 
who  like  that  sort  of  thing.  To  me  even  logar- 
ithms are  preferable.  For  which  reason  it  is  a 
disappointment,  to  me  at  least,  to  learn  that, 
more  or  less  goaded  to  it,  Tennyson  once  owned 
the  soft  impeachment  that  "The  Idyls  of  the 
King"  were  an  extended  allegory  of  human  life. 
But  significance  is  one  thing,  allegory  quite 
another.  The  real  objection  to  allegory  is  that  it 
is  significance  frozen  into  a  rigidity  of  application 
that  defeats  artistic  purpose.  Mr.  Robinson's 
poem  is  profoundly  significant  of  the  great 
tragedy  of  our  time;  his  Lancelot  rises  almost  to 
the  typification  of  our  human  race,  weak,  sinful, 
passionate,  but  noble  at  heart  and  large  in  spirit. 
In  this  noble  poem,  poetry  is  performing  its  true 
function  in  fashioning  one  of  the  great  myths  of 
all  time  into  a  significance  in  the  present,  and  in 
conveying  that  significance  in  the  terms  of  artistic 
beauty,  the  poet  adds  another  link  in  the  flashing 
and  perdurable  chain  of  an  imperishable  story. 


THE  POETRY  OF 
GEORGE  E.  WOODBERRY. 

THIS  small  volume  contains,  besides  the 
longer  poem  which  gives  it  title  and  takes 
up  considerably  more  than  half  of  its  pages,  a 
sequence  of  some  forty  sonnets,  "Ideal  Passion," 
already  published,  some  "poems  of  the  great 
war,"  largely  likewise  in  sonnet  form,  and  a  few 
additional  sonnets  and  lyrics  on  other  themes. 
It  marks  the  continuance  of  the  career  of  Mr. 
Woodberry  as  a  poet  of  high  attainment  and 
assured  reputation,  for  in  this  book  is  sustained 
his  power  of  picture,  his  beautiful  elevation  of 
thought  and  his  delicate  and  exquisite  diction. 

The  poems  of  the  great  war,  to  take  them 
first,  are  full  of  patriotism,  of  high  resolve  and  of 
touching  compassion  and  pity  for  the  fallen. 
They  are  the  work  of  an  American  whose  heart 
beats  true  and  whose  eyes  are  on  the  great  es- 
sentials. And  they  are  remarkably  free  from  the 
saeva  indignaiio  which  stirs  lesser  natures  in  the 
contemplation  of  this  seismic  fault  and  slip-back 
of  mankind  into  the  barbarism  out  of  which  we 
were  emerging.  And  yet  these  poems  on  the 
war  are  disappointing,  I  know  not  just  why. 
Read,  as  I  read  them  the  other  night,  beside  the 
fierce,  bitter  actualities  of  Wilford  Owens, 
strummed    out    though    these    are    with    bare 

96 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  E.  WOODBERRY 

knuckles  on  a  naked  board,  Mr.  Woodberry's 
flutelike  notes  of  idealist  sentiment  seem  thin 
and,  dare  I  say  it,  almost  irrelevant.  Mr.  Wood- 
berry  has  a  pure  and  holy  passion  for  Italy  which 
has  echoed  down  the  ages  from  Byron,  the 
Brownings,  Swinburne  and  the  rest.  I  will  not 
say  that  these  poems  seem  literary — they  are 
too  sincere,  too  veritable,  for  that — however, 
they  reverberate  with  an  old  song.  I  will  rather 
salute  all  enthusiasm  for  Italy,  despite  Fiume 
and  the  madness  of  the  poet  who  has  re- 
cently been  attitudinizing  there,  for  I,  too,  love 
Italy  in  spite  of  all  her  chauvinism,  sordidness 
and  irrationality. 

To  say  that  Mr.  Woodberry  is  a  master  son- 
neteer is  to  utter  the  mere  truth.  The  sequence, 
"Ideal  Passion,"  is,  in  this  respect,  almost  a 
piece  of  virtuosity,  for  the  poet  is  not  only  punc- 
tilious in  the  niceties  of  the  sonnet  form,  he  is 
strikingly  original  at  times  in  its  management 
and  successful  in  maintaining  throughout  a  tech- 
nique fitting  to  sustain  his  elevated  thought.  I 
particularly  admire  his  choice  of  the  difficult 
alternative  scheme  on  two  rhymes  for  the  sestet 
and  his  management  of  it  is  often  exceedingly 
skilful.  There  is  a  large  phrasing,  too,  in  these 
sonnets  which  rids  one  completely  of  the  feeling 
— only  too  common  as  to  poetry  in  this  form — 
that  it  is  a  species  of  mosaic  or  dove-tail  work  in 

97 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

which  patience  and  ingenuity  are  the  chief  es- 
sentials. Mr.  Woodberry's  subject  is  here,  as 
often  elsewhere,  that  high  sustaining  love  which 
rises  above  all  sense  of  self  and  sex  to  become  the 
guiding  ideal,  unmatchable  and  unattainable, 
yet  ever-begetting  effort,  devotion  and  eiface- 
ment  of  self.  Esoteric }  Yes,  my  dear  Philistine, 
a  cult,  a  worship  in  a  temple  reared  not  by  hands 
such  as  yours. 

We  are  told  that  "The  Roamer"  is  "a  nar- 
rative of  the  soul's  progress  which  may  be  con- 
sidered as  in  small  compass  summarizing  the  re- 
ligious, social  and  esthetic  ideals  of  our  own  age. " 
I  am  sure  that  I  should  not  have  ventured  to 
have  designated  this  remarkable  platonic  flight 
into  the  higher  regions  of  poetry  and  philosophy 
by  a  designation  smacking  even  so  little  of  the 
mundane.  Mr.  Woodberry  has  achieved  almost 
a  complete  spiritual  detachment  in  this  poem. 
There  is  only  one  thing  about  it  which  I  do  not 
like,  and  that  is  the  title.  It  sounds,  to  speak 
profanely,  so  much  like  a  kind  of  automobile  or 
bicycle;  and  one  thinks  of  "The  Excursion," 
especially  when  we  notice  the  vehicle — so  to 
speak — which  is  blank  verse,  by  which  we  are  to 
be  conveyed.  But  Wordsworth  is  not  the  man; 
be  it  said  with  all  respect;  Mr.  Woodberry  has  lit 
his  torch  at  the  altar  of  Shelley,  the  very  flame, 
of  "Alastor"  burns  in  it,  and  that  beautiful  and 

98 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  E.  WOODBERRY 

steady  flame  is,  as  Shelley's,  a  beacon  in  the 
night,  radiant  with  light,  howsoever  the  lowly  in 
poetry  may  not  warm  their  hands  by  it. 

I  should  want  three  or  four  times  this  space 
to  do  even  partial  justice  to  the  exceeding  beauty 
and  the  inspiring  ideals  of  this  lovely  poem.  It  is 
said  to  have  been  written  during  a  period  of  years 
but  barring  the  deeper  insight  of  the  later  books 
it  is,  for  a  poem  of  this  kind,  of  a  remarkable 
unity  and  of  an  equally  remarkably  sustained 
excellence.  As  with  Shelley,  we  dwell  here  in  the 
wild  waste  spaces,  among  scenes  of  unsurpassable 
beauty,  usually  seen  in  the  large,  with  sweep  of 
mountain,  plain  and  sky,  and  our  thoughts, 
under  guidance  of  the  poet,  are  of  the  beatitudes, 
the  sublimities  of  vision  into  those  creations  of 
insight  and  the  poetic  imagination  which  men 
call  unrealities,  but  which  are,  when  all  is  said, 
the  only  real  things  in  "this  slipper  world."  But 
the  prose  of  comment  has  not  the  power  of  levi- 
tation  which  the  reader  may  find  for  himself  in 
this  noble  descant  on  the  aspiring  soul  of  man. 
Better  within  reach  is  a  recognition  of  the  musi- 
cal cadence  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  swift,  varied 
and  competent  verse.  I  found  music  and  fluidity 
in  the  unusually  monosyllabic  blank  verse  of  Mr. 
Edwin  Arlington  Robinson's  "Lancelot."  Mr. 
Woodberry  very  contrastedly  is  rich  in  poly- 
syllabic pomp  and  rapidity — 

99 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Millions  of  men  innumerably  spread, 
Faces  along  the  illimitable  wave. 

And  his  phrases  sweep  in  long  cadences  that  re- 
call the  Miltonic  roll,  albeit  not  the  fuller  Mil- 
tonic  resonance.  I  will  not  say  above  all,  but 
high  among  his  many  poetical  gifts,  is  Mr,  Wood- 
berry's  power  of  scenic  description.  Only  a  lover 
of  the  hills  and  the  solitudes  can  so  write;  but 
over  the  allurements  of  the  poet's  art — and  here 
we  may  well  say,  above  all — is  his  lofty,  his  aus- 
tere ideality,  which  finds  the  loss  of  self — as  com- 
plete as  that  of  the  Buddha  or  the  Christ — alone 
the  fulfilment  of  a  perfect  love. 


AS  TO  AMERICAN  DRAMA 

AMERICAN  drama!"  and  we  hold  up  our 
.  hands  in  protest  and  begin  to  talk  of  com- 
mercialism and  theatrical  trusts.  Or  we  start 
down  the  deadly  lane  of  parallels  and  glow  in 
comparative  praises  of  the  drama  in  France,  in 
Germany,  in  Russia,  anywhere.  Or  we  inaugu- 
rate movements,  following  the  English  afar  off 
in  pageantry  or  civic  plays.  Or,  if  we  do  none  of 
these  things,  at  least  we  start  a  society  providing 
qualified  tasters  who  visit  the  theatres  from  time 
to  time  and,  over  a  late  supper,  decide  by  vote 
what  we  should  like  and  what  we  should  adver- 
tise by  our  disapproval.  Professor  George  P. 
Baker,  of  Harvard,  did  something  quite  different 
from  all  this,  it  is  now  a  goodly  number  of  years 
ago.  He  started  his  "47  Workshop  "in  a  quiet 
and  industrious  endeavor  to  foster  our  drama,  so 
far  as  such  a  thing  as  drama  can  be  fostered,  by 
precept  and  collegiate  guidance,  and  he  has  long 
since  justified  his  experiment  in  the  turning  out 
of  several  playwrights  whose  work  is  alike  a 
credit  to  dramatic  craftsmanship  and  a  practical 
and  accepted  success  upon  the  stage.  Under 
these  circumstances  Professor  Baker  is  pecu- 
liarly the  man  to  collect,  for  the  general  reader,  a 
group  of  American  plays  which  shall  stand  as 
representative  of  our  drama  in  Its  present  state 

lOI 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

of  development.  This  he  has  done  in  a  volume 
with  the  title  of  "Modern  American  Plays,"  pre- 
fixing to  the  text  an  all  too  brief  introduction  on 
the  plays  selected  and  the  reasons  for  their 
selection. 

Success  on  the  stage  is  Professor  Baker's  first 
criterion  of  selection,  and  his  second  is  variety. 
The  opening  play  of  the  volume  is  "As  a  Man 
Thinks,"  by  Augustus  Thomas,  a  comedy  of 
contemporary  life,  which  touches  on  prevalent 
feminism,  lightly  but  surely,  with  not  quite  the 
glib  solution  which  is  on  the  lip  of  the  current 
feminist.  In  its  essence  this  play  is  didactic, 
"a  tendenz-drama, "  however  deftly  concealed 
in  the  skilful  workmanship  of  one  long  tried  and 
approved.  The  adaptable  Mr.  Belasco's  "Re- 
turn of  Peter  Grim"  likewise  touches  on  a  topic 
of  the  hour,  interest  in  that  beyond  and  hereafter 
from  the  bourne  of  which  we  are  not  quite  cer- 
tain whether  the  traveller  can  really  return.  But 
Mr.  Belasco  cleverly  leaves  the  matter  less 
proved  than  suggested.  Mr.  Anspacher's  "The 
Unchastened  Woman"  is  notable  in  that  it  con- 
trives to  interest  us  in  an  uninteresting  and 
unsympathetic  heroine  and  to  leave  us  at  the  end 
with  things  continuing  and  unadjusted  very 
much  as  they  carry  on  in  life.  Mr.  Sheldon's 
"Romance,"  by  far,  one  should  think,  the  ablest 
play  of  the  volume,  contains  the  element  of  its 

1 02 


AS  TO  AMERICAN  DRAMA 

existence  in  its  title  and  realizes  at  least  one 
character  of  a  holding  personality.  And  Mr. 
Massey's  "Plots  and  Playwrights"  is  satire  of 
plays  in  a  play,  a  time-honored  species,  old  when 
Dryden  was  ridiculed  in  "The  Rehearsal"  and 
older  still  by  the  time  that  Sheridan  plagiarized 
that  satire  in  his  "Critic." 

Playmaking  in  the  English  language  has  been 
variously  presided  over  in  different  times.  To 
avoid  rising  out  of  our  topic  into  the  region  of  the 
divinities,  Dryden,  greatest  of  English  satirists, 
ablest  of  general  poets  of  his  time,  theorist  and 
translator,  was  once  the  foremost  playwright. 
At  a  subsequent  time  that  post  was  occupied  by 
Nicholas  Rowe,  poet  laureate,  who  "followed 
Shakespeare,"  but  a  long  way  off;  at  still 
another  by  equally  forgotten  Sheridan  Knowles, 
whose  most  veritable  dramatic  asset  was 
his  borrowed  surname.  Later  times  bring  us 
triumvirates  and  oligarchs  in  the  annals  of  the 
drama  and  we  become  bewildered  among  the 
Barries  and  the  Shaws,  the  Pineros  and 
the  Joneses  of  times  which  are  now,  or  were 
not  very  long  ago.  In  America  we  may  be  a 
little  less  distraught,  howsoever  there  are  pre- 
cious few  of  us  who  have  not  written,  are  writing 
or  planning  to  write  at  the  very  least  a  farce  or  a 
pageant.  But  it  would  seem  that  it  is  not  long 
since  that  our  master  playwright  was  the  late 

103 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Clyde  Fitch,  and  who  shall  deny  that  we  are  still 
under  the  benign  and  versatile  sway  of  Mr. 
Belasco?  Now,  of  such  an  art  we  must  at  least, 
confess  that  it  has  had  its  ups  and  downs,  and 
that  the  amplitude  of  its  vibrations,  to  put  it  in 
another  way,  has  made  various  noises  in  the 
world  whereof  some  have  been  high  and  others 
not  so  high.  Nor  can  we  expect  it  to  be  otherwise. 
The  drama  is,  by  the  most  honored  of  all  figures, 
the  mirror  of  human  nature,  however  we  leave 
that  mirror  at  times  to  tarnish  in  neglect,  how- 
ever we  may  cover  up  a  part  of  it  or  refuse  to 
accept  as  veritable  the  images  which  it  reflects. 
All  the  movies  in  Christendom,  and  in  Heathen- 
dom besides,  cannot  kill  the  essential  drama  in 
us.  The  musical  comedies  have  made  a  good  try 
at  it,  as  did  the  old  heroic  play  in  its  time  and 
melodrama  and  opera  since.  But  the  essential 
drama  will  abide  when  all  these  "sports"  and 
offshoots  are  remembered  only  by  the  historians. 
In  reading  Professor  Baker's  representatives 
of  the  accepted  American  drama  of  today,  two  or 
three  things  occur  to  the — let  us  hope — none- 
too-biased  reader.  Let  us  be  frank  about  it;  all 
of  these  plays  read  more  or  less  baldly,  at  least  as 
compared  with  much  other  former  drama,  also 
accepted  for  the  stage,  both  English  and  foreign. 
Professor  Baker  is  right  when  he  says  that 
"drama  is  a  collaborative  art,"  one  in  which  the 

104 


AS  TO  AMERICAN  DRAMA 

author,  the  actor  (and  all  who  help  his  imperso- 
nation) and  besides,  the  spectator  as  well,  co- 
operate to  a  cumulative  result.  But  I  rather 
suspect  that  these  modern  plays  of  ours  depend 
somewhat  more  on  this  cooperation,  somewhat 
more  on  the  actor  and  on  the  setting  than  did 
many  of  the  plays  which  have  gone  before.  They 
are  at  the  mercy  of  their  presentation  because 
they  are  wanting  in  distinction  of  manner  and  of 
style;  because  their  dialogue  is  so  close  a  replica 
of  our  daily  speech;  because  their  personages  are 
so  obviously  like  everybody  or  anybody  whom 
you  or  I  are  likely  to  meet.  And  now  we  arouse 
our  "realist"  friends,  those  who  object  to  blank 
verse  because  they  do  not  employ  it  habitually 
in  discussions  with  Margery,  those  who  resent 
soliloquy  and  the  aside — like  Mr.  Shaw — because 
they  do  not  happen  in  what  they  call  "real  life" 
and  the  like.  But,  my  dear  "realist,"  the  stage 
is  not  the  world  and,  even  if  Shakespeare  did  say 
it,  not  all  of  the  world's  a  stage. 

Neither  distinction  of  manner  nor  distinction 
in  the  subtle  thing  which  we  call  style  is  wanting 
in  actual  life,  even  in  actual  American  life.  But 
to  catch  it — or  anything  else  for  that  matter — 
for  the  stage,  you  must  translate  it  out  of  the 
language  of  life — that  is  the  manner  in  which  it  is 
presented  to  our  senses  in  life — into  the  language 
of  the  stage.     And  you  cannot  make  the  lan- 

105 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

guage  of  the  drama  more  realistic  by  forgetting 
its  essential  basis  in  art.  These  plays,  excellent  as 
they  are  and  fully  deserving  of  their  success, 
seem  to  one  who  knows  somewhat  of  a  wider 
dramatic  literature,  flat  in  perspective,  wanting  in 
color,  unindividualized  in  a  measure  as  to  their 
personages  and  unidiomatic,  theatrically  speak- 
ing, notwithstanding  their  undoubted  mastery  of 
that  technique  of  the  stage  of  which  Professor 
Baker  has  happily  made  so  much  in  his 
"workshop." 

It  is  not  altogether  vision  that  we  lack  or 
poetry  even.  But  we  seem  in  these  latter  days 
to  be  a  little  afraid  of  seeing  things — or  at  least  of 
putting  down  what  we  see;  while  poetry  stam- 
pedes us  with  terror  into  an  effort  to  get  as  far 
away  from  it  as  possible.  Are  we  getting  to  be 
as  afraid  of  our  emotions  in  art  as  of  a  display  of 
our  feelings  in  religion.^  Shall  we  arrive  shortly 
at  a  point  in  which  the  gentleman  will  not  only 
discuss  neither  politics  or  religion,  but  will  recog- 
nize that  any  show  of  emotion  for  art  or  any- 
thing else  is  taboo.'*  Wit,  humor,  sentiment,  ro- 
mance are  as  common  in  every-day  life  as  they 
were  when  the  old  dramatist  used  them.  There 
is  scarcely  a  sparkle  in  the  dialogue  of  any  of 
these  five  representative  plays  and  Professor 
Baker  surprises  us  when  he  tells  us  of  the  success 
of  the  only  bit  of  pathos  in  them  all — and  that 

io6 


AS  TO  AMERICAN  DRAMA 

ironical — which  occurs  in  the  extravaganza, 
*' Plays  and  Playwrights."  With  all  our  chatter 
about  the  freedom  of  the  arts,  our  stage  seems 
conventionalized  all  but  to  the  point  of  stag- 
nation. What  a  cad  is  the  stock  husband  whose 
"past"  is  accepted  as  an  essential  part  of  any 
husband  andplayedoff  against  the  wife's  present 
or  attempted  future  ?  And  how  delicately  the  neat 
distinctions  of  a  double  code  of  morals  are  drawn! 
And  the  heroines!  Mr.  Massey  is  right,  there  is 
more  real  drama  in  the  rooms  of  a  New  York 
lodging  house  than  in  all  the  theatres  of  the  Great 
White  Way.  Why  not  get  some  of  the  poetry, 
the  color,  the  aroma  of  actual  life  onto  the  stage 
by  an  honest  translation  of  all  these  things  into 
dramatic  terms  in  place  of  all  this  pussyfooting 
repetition  of  mere  actualities.^ 


MR.  DRINKWATER'S  ''  MARY  STUART  " 

IT  is  related  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  once  refused 
to  write  a  biography  of  Mary  Stuart  because 
he  feared  that  the  fascination  of  that  wonderful 
woman  and  his  own  Jacobite  leanings  might  re- 
sult in  a  falsification  of  history.  The  spell  of  the 
Scottish  queen  is  abiding  and  everlasting.  I  re- 
call being  delayed  once  at  a  small  inn  in  the  upper 
Rhone  valley,  on  one  of  those  days  of  exhausting 
heat  and  dust  which  visit  that  long  gully  in  the 
mountains.  It  was  too  glaring  to  go  out  at  mid- 
day and  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  seek  some 
entertainment  within.  I  found  a  little  book  on 
"Mary  Stuart,  Queen  and  Martyr,"  by  an  ex- 
cellent French  abbe,  and  obtained  a  new  angle  on 
the  subject.  "A  queen,  young,  beautiful,  un- 
fortunate and  of  the  true  faith."  Surely  here  is 
enough  for  the  exercise  of  that  by  no  means  the 
least  creditable  process  of  human  activity,  the 
weaving  of  myths.  The  good  abbe  had  written 
quite  an  eloquent  book;  however,  the  evidence 
adverse  to  his  thesis  little  troubled  him.  There 
is,  of  course,  history,  and  there  is  fiction,  and  we 
must  confess  that  there  are  times  when  the  in- 
sight of  the  poet  surpasses,  in  reading  the  truth, 
the  more  rational  processes  of  the  historian. 
"Mary  Stuart,  a  History,"  may  well  designate  a 
work.    Perhaps  Mr.  Drinkwater  is  wise  in  calling 

1 08 


MR.  DRINKWATER'S  "MARY  STUART" 

his  "Mary  Stuart"  "a  play."  But  the 
poet's  insight  is  in  it,  and,  when  all  has  been 
said,  the  Queen  of  Scots  remains  one  of  the 
enigmas    of    history. 

Mr.  Drinkwater's  drama  opens  with  two  men, 
an  older  and  a  much  younger,  conversing  in  an 
Edinburgh  room  of  about  "  1900  or  later."  The 
younger  has  brought  his  trouble  to  his  wiser 
friend,  not  so  much  for  advice  as  to  talk  about  it, 
after  the  manner  of  some  natures.  His  adorable 
young  wife,  Margaret,  has  formed  another  attach- 
ment and  has  told  him  frankly  and  honestly. 
Neither  has  been  untrue  nor  unloving;  he  has 
proved  merely  insufficient.  But,  of  course,  the 
young  husband  cannot  admit  this,  or  even  so 
much  as  see  it.  "If  she  live  finely,"  says  the 
elder  man,  "she  will  take  her  love  from  no  man 
unless  he  is  unworthy."  The  young  husband 
declares  that  he  will  share  his  love  with  no  one, 
and  the  answer  comes:  "Boy,  will  you  not  share 
the  sun  of  heaven,  the  beauty  of  the  world  .^" 
Is  Margaret,  the  young  wife,  "to  have  no  better 
luck  than  that  poor  queen.'*"  And  he  turns  to  a 
portrait  of  Mary  Stuart  which  hangs  over  the 
mantelpiece,  reading  some  verses  inscribed  be- 
neath it,  the  last  stanza  of  which  runs: 

Not  Riccio  nor  Darnley  knew 

Nor  BothwcU  how  to  find 
This  Mary's  best  magnificence 

Of  the  great  lover's  mind. 
109 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

And  now  there  is  the  rustle  of  a  dress  on  the 
terrace  without,  and  there  stands  the  queen  with 
these  words  on  her  mouth:  "Boy,  I  can  tell  you 
everything."  And  immediately  we  are  back  in 
March,  1566,  in  Mary  Stuart's  room  in  Holyrood 
castle,  that  ill-lighted,  litttle  stone-begirt  closet, 
the  actual  sight  of  which  is  such  a  shock  to  such 
as  have  accepted  the  canvases  of  "historical" 
painters.  Now  the  dramatist  unfolds  to  us  sim- 
ply, directly,  without  a  superfluous  word,  his 
story  of  the  matters  preceding  the  murder  of 
Riccio.  Fascinating,  imperious,  a  queen  and, 
therefore,  accountable  to  none  in  her  right  to  be 
loved  as  in  the  prerogatives  of  her  royalty,  Mary 
recognizes  with  the  fatal  certainty  of  a  second 
sight  that  failure  is  to  be  hers  because  of  the  in- 
sufficiency of  any  of  those  who  love  her  to  fill  the 
void  of  her  nature  with  a  great  passion.  Riccio 
is  a  mere  phrase  maker  and  courtier  in  the  con- 
ventionalities of  courtship.  His  nature  is  too 
shallow  to  stir  to  a  deep  devotion  and  a  large 
sacrifice.  The  queen  scarcely  interposes  between 
him  and  his  fate  and  laments,  when  he  has  been 
cruelly  murdered  on  her  very  door  sill,  that  he 
might  not  have  been  a  nobler  cause  for  her  great 
quarrel  and  requital.  Darnley,  the  king  and  her 
husband,  is  merely  contemptible  with  his  ribald 
songs  and  his  petty  jealousies.     Even  Bothwell, 

110 


MR.  DRINKWATER'S  "MARY  STUART" 

who  is  at  least  direct  and  possessed  of  a  certain 
bravado  of  masterfulness,  cannot  take  the 
queen's  whole  heart,  who,  like  Cleopatra,  would 
have  a  lover  wholly,  heroically  hers;  a  lover  who 
could  feel  the  world  well  lost  in  the  fierce  joy  of 
possessing  her,  who  could  dare  all  and  lose  all  for 
her  sake.  And  Mary,  one  of  the  grandest  of  les 
grandes  amoreuses  in  all  history,  plunged  madly 
into  intrigue,  crime,  imprisonment,  death  on  the 
scaffold,  because  there  was  none  among  the  men 
who  loved  her  who  could  hold  out  to  her  the 
strong  hand  which  she  needed  and  feed  the  hun- 
ger, the  craving,  "the  magnificence  of  the  great 
lover's  mind." 

Mr.  Drinkwater's  play  dramatizes  no  more 
than  the  Riccio  incident,  and  its  power  is  in  the 
disclosure  of  character  through  the  clash  and 
personality  of  his  personages;  which  is  the  same 
thing  as  saying  that  his  power  is  a  veritably 
dramatic  one.  I  have  not  had  the  pleasure  of 
seeing  this  play  on  the  stage.  If  we  did  not  know 
it  already,  its  success  might  be  predicted  from  its 
very  economy  of  stroke.  And,  indeed,  this  is  a 
feature  which  will  strike  any  careful  reader,  as 
likewise  the  circumstance  that  the  form  is  prose. 
It  is  also  noticeable  that  except  for  one  little 
touch  as  to  the  advice  of  one  "Hugo  Dubois," 
who  "in  an  elaborate  treatise  on  the  coiffure" 

III 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

advises  "azure  or  lazuline  gems"  for  the  hair  of 
women  of  fair  complexion,  there  is  scarcely  a 
touch  of  what  might  be  called  local  coloring  or 
historical  atmosphere  in  the  whole  play.  Pos- 
sibly this  is  the  more  justifiable  in  that  Mary's 
story  is  after  all  here  universalized  to  be  appli- 
cable to  all  time.  Most  eifective  is  the  con- 
cluding touch.  Poor  Riccio  has  fallen;  Darnley, 
"the  king,"  who  weakly  pretends  ignorance  as  to 
what  he  has  procured,  has  departed  from  the 
queen's  presence  and  Bothwell  sends  Mary 
Beaton  to  know  if  he  can  be  admitted,  to  which 
the  queen  replies:  "Not  to-night,  Beaton."  And 
once  more  the  song  recurs  on  her  lips: 

Not  Riccio  nor  Darnley  knew 

Nor  Bothwell  how  to  find 
This  Mary's  best  magnificence 

Of  the  great  lover's  mind. 

She  opens  the  window  as  the  candle  gutters 
out  and  two  "voices  as  of  a  dream  are  heard  be- 
yond." "It's  a  damned  silly  song,"  says  the 
one.  "Look  at  this  queen,  she  tells  you,"  says 
the  other.  For,  alas!  this  human  race  of  ours 
goes  on  and  on  and  learns  nothing. 

To  the  documented  cases  of  history  and  the 
critical  examinations  and  controversies  over 
"the  casket  letters,"  to  Mary  viewed  as  the  pro- 
tagonist   in  a  great    political    struggle    or    the 

112 


MR.  DRINKWATER'S  "MARY  STUART" 

victim  of  religious  clash  and  bigotry  let  us 
add  this  analysis  of  a  woman's  heart,  great  in 
the  magnificence  of  its  capacity  for  love,  frus- 
trated in  that  for  which  it  was  created;  a  Cleo- 
patra who  could  match  her  Ptolemy  with  a  Darn- 
ley,  perhaps  even  her  Caesar  with  a  Bothwell, 
but  to  whom  there  came  no  Antony  to  translate 
her  into  the  fulfillment  of  a  great  passion,  even  if 
no  more  than  a  tragic  one. 


NEW  MUSIC  ON  THE  ETERNAL 
TRIANGLE 


E 


NTER   Madame"   is   a   lively  comedy  of 


staged  with  the  success  which  its  sure  stage  tech- 
nique, its  logical  working  out  of  incident  and  its 
ready  and  natural  dialogue  deserve.  In  a 
sprightly  introduction,  Mr.  Woolcott  lets  us  in 
back  of  the  scenes  sufficiently  to  learn  how  the 
chief  personage  was  drawn  from  life,  whence 
assuredly  all  chief  and  other  persons  should  be 
drawn,  a  draft,  so  to  speak,  on  the  experiences  of 
one  of  the  authors  and  the  interpreter  of  the  title 
role.  He  tells  us  more  of  this  lady's  training  and 
success,  all  of  which  is  pleasant  reading  and  perti- 
nent enough.  We  are  grateful  to  him  for  not 
telling  us  that  in  "Enter  Madame"  enters  at 
last  the  long-expected  indigenous  American 
comedy  triumphant.  "Enter  Madame"  is  con- 
spicuous in  not  being  so  heralded. 

Quoting  somebody,  who  I  suppose  really 
knew — else  why  quote  him.^ — I  once  said: 
"There  are  eleven  original  or  primitive  situations 
in  comedy  and  no  more."  I  received  the  next 
day,  in  consequence  of  this  deliverance,  a  docu- 
ment which  more  nearly  resembled  a  challenge  to 
mortal  combat  than  anything  else  outside  of 
fiction.     A  list  of  the  eleven  original  situations 

114 


NEW  MUSIC  ON  THE  ETERNAL  TRIANGLE 

was  demanded,  and  instanter.  As  I  did  not  pro- 
pose then,  and  do  not  propose  now  to  be  bullied, 
I  refused  to  deliver  the  goods.  Maybe  I  know 
and  maybe  I  don't;  at  any  rate  I  shall  never  tell 
the  other  ten;  but  if  the  eleventh — and  perhaps 
one  or  two  others  besides— be  not  the  triangle, 
then  I  am  very  much  mistaken.  Somebody 
equally  clever,  if  there  be  any  such,  or  else  it  was 
my  friend.  Professor  William  Lyon  Phelps,  of 
Yale,  once  wrote  that  in  the  concert — or  was  it 
the  orchestra.^ — of  life  all  the  music — -or  it  was  all 
the  jangling.'* — is  not  performed  on  the  triangle. 
And  yet  I  doubt  not  that  in  that  important  work, 
the  Universal  Primer  of  Playmaking,  a  consid- 
erable chapter  will  be  found  devoted  to  triangu- 
lation.  It  is  the  best  way  in  which  to  map  out 
the  ground;  for,  starting  with  Adam  and  Eve 
and  Lilith,  and  continuing  to  Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra and  Octavia,  down  to  the  latest  scenario  of 
the  latest  gossamer  film,  men  and  women  seem  to 
persist  in  grouping  themselves  in  threes. 

''Enter  Madame"  is  grouped  in  the  eternal 
three.  Now,  when  you  have  three  cards — in 
most  games — even  although  two  only  may  be  of 
a  kind,  it  is  important  which  shall  be  trumps. 
The  triangle  here  is  usual  enough.  Gerald,  an 
elderly,  neglected,  philandering  husband,  Ma- 
dame being  much  away;  a  fair  widow,  recently 

115 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

young,  somewhat  embonpoint,  rather  humdrum, 
but  in  the  way;  Madame  Lisa  Delia  Robbia, 
a  great  singer,  who  returns,  an  artist  to  her 
finger  tips,  temperamental,  adorable,  quite 
capable  of  managing  this  or  any  situation. 
From  the  first  moment  we  know  that  Madame 
is  the  trump.  But  how  will  she  take  the 
trick.''  Even  the  method  is  not  unprece- 
dented. Things  are  allowed  to  drift  until  the 
first  decree  in  divorce  is  granted  Gerald — we  are 
to  suppose  for  desertion,  though  that  does  not 
appear.  Madame,  who  is  supposed  always  to  do 
the  unexpected,  on  receiving  the  decree,  disap- 
points her  entourage  by  not  flying  into  a  passion. 
Instead  she  arranges,  offhand,  a  nice  little  fare- 
well dinner  for  her  husband  that  was  and  the 
lady.  Flora,  who  is  to  be  her  successor  three 
months  hence.  Madame's  and  Gerald's  son 
a  grown  young  man,  and  his  young  betrothed, 
are  also  of  the  party.  With  these,  her  doctor, 
her  chef,  her  secretary,  her  maid,  most  of  them 
Italian,  Madame  is  very  much  at  home  in  her 
own  house.  And  the  talk  turns  on  the  old  days 
of  music,  travel,  adventure  and  romance  which 
Madame  and  her  husband  had  lived  with  these 
very  people;  Flora,  the  lady  who  is  to  marry, 
alone  getting  little  by  little  more  and  more  out  of 
it.    A  call  has  come  meanwhile  from  her  manager 

ii6 


NEW  MUSIC  ON  THE  ETERNAL  TRIANGLE 

asking  that  Madame  start  for  South  America  the 
next  day  at  noon.  She  is  prepared  to  accept.  Flora 
is  generously  constrained  to  leave  the  sometime- 
husband  and  wife  to  talk  the  matter  over.  "Are 
we  not  wives-in-law  .^ "  says  Madame.  And  the 
upshot  is  that  although  Flora  interrupts  them  by 
phone  from  her  flat  below  several  times  until  the 
receiver  is  left  off,  Madame  easily  wins  back  her 
husband.  Indeed,  so  complete  is  their  absorp- 
tion that  they  have  forgotten  completely  the 
trifling  circumstance  that  they  are  no  longer  man 
and  wife.  In  the  morning,  with  Flora  and  an 
army  of  reporters  besieging  the  flat,  the  reunited 
couple  are  forced  to  an  elopement  by  the  back 
way  to  fulfill  Madame's  engagement  in  South 
America  and  escape  the  scandal  created  by 
their    conduct. 

There  is,  of  course,  much  besides  in  the  lively 
process  of  this  comedy;  a  nice  boy,  the  son  of 
Madame;  a  nice  girl,  several  temperamental 
Italians  whose  nature  is  well  understood  and  de- 
picted with  all  their  charm,  love  of  the  arts  and 
irresponsibility.  Nor  would  I  insinuate  the 
least  criticism  of  the  recurrence  of  these  familiar 
figures.  It  is  as  preposterous  to  demand  original 
figures  on  the  stage  as  in  an  account  book,  the 
combination,  the  ordering,  the  art  of  your  arith- 
metic, that  is  literally  what  counts.     In  "Enter 

117 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Madame"  there  Is  a  sufficiently  novel  ordering 
to  give  that  pleasure  of  surprise  In  which  comedy 
of  this  species  at  least  largely  subsists.  Surprise 
in  the  expected,  the  expected  wrought  by  novel 
means — here  is  the  recipe.  It  Is  as  easy  as  an 
omelet  theoretically;  and  as  tricky  and  precar- 
ious in  the  doing.  And  it  will  not  attain  to  that 
realm  of  art  in  which  abide  the  perfect  comedy 
and  the  perfect  omelet  cheek  by  jowl,  unless  it 
has  that  last  perfection  and  seasoning,  distinc- 
tion of  style.  This,  In  common  with  most  of  our 
good  plays,  as  well  as  the  bad  and  IndlflFerent, 
"Enter  Madame"  has  not.  And  I  doubt  not 
that  the  authors  would  scorn  the  Idea  that  this  is 
in  any  wise  a  want.  "A  picture  of  life,"  their 
defender  might  say,  "must  be  like  life;  and 
neither  life  nor  the  dialogue  of  life  is  distin- 
guished nor  maintained  by  this  quality  of  which 
you  speak,  style. "  But  this  is  just  where  we  miss 
it.  A  comedy,  no  matter  how  realistic.  Is  really 
not  life,  but  life  translated  into  the  highly  arti- 
ficial and  conventional  terms  of  the  stage.  We 
cannot  improve  the  stage  by  making  it  uncon- 
ventional. We  can  enhance  and  perfect  the  art 
of  the  stage  by  realizing  and  using  to  the  best 
advantage  the  conventionalities  of  which  It  con- 
sists. One  of  these  is  distinction  in  dialogue, 
quality  In  expression;  not  a  contradiction  of  what 

ii8 


NEW  MUSIC  ON  THE  ETERNAL  TRIANGLE 

occurs  in  life,  but  a  heightening  of  it  into  the 
terms  of  art.  Until  we  get  this  and  the  much 
more  that  this  essential  principle  involves  all  the 
individualities  and  temperamentalities — which 
are  as  unreal  off  the  stage  as  on — and  all  the  little 
realities,  such  as  telephones,  for  example,  which 
are  as  wearisome  on  the  stage  as  off — will  not 
help  us  far  toward  an  actual  restoration  of  the 
drama  to  the  sphere  of  a  true  art. 


"THE  GREATEST  PLAY  SINCE 
SHAKESPEARE  " 

I  WAS  greeted  the  other  day  by  a  Hterary  lady 
of  my  acquaintance,  member  of  several  socie- 
ties for  the  improvement  of  this,  that  or  the 
other,  with  the  query: 

"And  have  you  read  'Caius  Gracchus'?" 

Not  being  possessed  of  the  ubiquitous  powers 
of  reading  everything  that  anybody  writes  which 
some  of  my  unhappy  kind  allege  that  they  pos- 
sess, I  replied  that  I  did  not  even  know  that 
Caius  Gracchus  had  been  written  either  up  or 
down. 

"Why,"  said  my  fair  informant,  "It'c  the 
greatest  play  since  Shakespeare!" 

Strange  to  say,  I  was  not  stunned;  for  the 
phrase  sounded  familiar.  Indeed  there  have 
been  scores  of  "the  greatest  play  since  Shake- 
speare." They  bud  and  bloom  in  every  age 
and  go  their  fragile  way  to  oblivion.  Some 
of  them  I  have  exhumed  in  my  day;  but  lacking 
the  ubiquitous  reading  powers  alluded  to  above, 
I  suppose  that  many  a  one  has  escaped  me.  On 
examination,  so  far  as  I  can  learn,  this  particular 
"greatest  play  since  Shakespeare"  is  the  furth- 
est western  example  of  its  species,  having  put 
forth  its  hardy  petals,  if  one  can  judge  from  the 
present  residence  of  Mr.   Dreiser,  on  the  very 

1 20 


"CAIUS  GRACCHUS" 

margin  of  the  Pacific.  Indeed  I  feel  that  we  may 
agree  with  Mr.  Dreiser,  who  is  our  informant  as 
to  the  precise  degree  of  the  greatness  of  "Caius 
Gracchus,"  in  admitting  without  reservation 
and  even  remembering  the  "movies,"  that  this 
is  the  greatest  play  which  has  been  written  in 
Los  Angeles  since  Shakespeare. 

I  really  do  not  hold  any  brief  against  "Caius 
Gracchus,"  which  is  a  worthy  enough  effort  in 
its  no  very  unusual  kind.  But  I  am  interested 
in  Mr.  Dreiser's  Introduction  and  in  how  it 
comes  that  a  writer  of  his  conspicuousness, 
should  suggest  so  surprising  an  inference.  Ought 
Mr.  Dreiser  to  have  known  better.?  Or  was  it 
not  to  have  been  suspected  even  of  him.?  But 
what  does  he  really  say.?  He  says  that  for  three 
centuries  English  metric  drama  has  remained 
sterile;  that  the  Elizabethan  period  carried  no 
appeal  to  the  generations  that  followed;  that  the 
"drab  poison  of  Puritanism"  killed  the  old 
drama  which  was  "Rabelaisian,"  most  of  it,  any- 
how. That  pretty  word,  "Rabelaisian"  will 
cover  Mr.  Dreiser's  own  sins  in  this  kind,  by  the 
way,  far  better  than  those  of  old  Marlowe  and 
Massinger.  However,  let  us  be  fair.  Mr.  Dreiser 
means  that  no  one  English  author  has  held  the 
stage  as  Moliere,  Racine  and  Corneille  in  France, 
except  Shakespeare.  And  perhaps  he  is  right  in 
his  suggestion  that  Shakespeare's  very  eminence 

121 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

is  the  reason  for  this.  But  can  Mr.  Dreiser  be 
ignorant  that  Fletcher  and  Jonson  held  the 
English  stage  with  Shakespeare  for  three  gene- 
rations.^ Dryden  for  at  least  two,  Goldsmith 
with  Farquhar  and  other  lesser  men  for  as  many.'' 
And  is  he  unaware  of  our  splendid  modern  lit- 
erary drama  from  Byron  to  Tennyson,  Browning 
and  Swinburne,  that  he  can  mention  only 
Stephen  Philips,  whose  plays  are  only  a  little 
more  stageable  than  these  greater  productions 
and  a  great  deal  more  so  than  "  Caius  Gracchus. " 
But  what  is  more  remarkable  is  tha*"  Mr. 
Dreiser  should  have  mistaken  "Caius  Gracchus" 
for  an  Elizabethan  play.  The  line  of  tragedies  on 
Roman  history  is  a  long  one,  extending  down 
through  innumerable  examples  to  productions 
such  as  Bird's  famous  "Gladiator"  here  in 
America  in  which  Edwin  Forrest  achieved  one  of 
his  greatest  successes,  a  tragedy,  with  all  its 
faults  and  robustness  of  an  earlier  school,  alike 
more  actable  and  more  "Shakespearean" — 
whatever  that  may  mean — than  is  estimable 
"Caius  Gracchus."  The  average  Elizabethan 
play  has  a  plot  of  some  magnitude,  it  realizes 
its  personages,  it  has  movement,  rarely  standing 
still  on  a  single  situation;  it  is  written  in  authen- 
tic blank  verse  and  it  is  usually  embellished  with 
imagery  and  uplifted  with  poetry.  Mr.  Gre- 
gory's plot  is  meagre,   not  much  more  than   a 

122 


"CAIUS  GRACCHUS" 

situation,  the  downfall  of  Gracchus  on  the  loss  of 
his  tribuneship  and,  according  to  this  play, 
largely  because  of  a  lack  of  common  sense  on  the 
part  of  Gracchus,  which  keeps  him  prating  plati- 
tudes instead  of  taking  the  ordinary  precautions 
of  a  prudent  man.  Mr.  Gregory's  Gracchus  is  a 
sublimated  Brutus,  to  say  no  more  of  him.  His 
patricians  are  a  wonderfully  wicked  lot,  addicted 
to  crimes  which  remind  one  much  more  of  "Ben 
Hur"  than  of  Suetonius.  The  naughty  young 
Rutilius  is  a  pasteboard  roue  and  the  daughter 
of  the  Scipios  talks  more  like  the  daughter  of 
Cicero.  Some  of  the  speeches  are  interminable 
and  others,  like  the  two-page  harangue  of  the 
courtesan  about  her  profession,  are  irrelevant. 
Fletcher  would  have  painted  her  in  three  lines 
and  been  done  with  it.  And  as  to  Mr.  Gregory's 
crowd,  crowds  often  lose  their  senses,  but  never 
so  completely  their  wit. 

Elizabethan  plays  are  written  to  a  large  ex- 
tent, as  I  have  said,  in  authentic  blank  verse; 
they  are  frequently  possessed  of  distinction  in 
style;  and  poetry  is  the  element  in  which  the  old 
drama  lives.  Mr.  Gregory's  verse  often  totters 
on  the  verge  of  prose,  and  while  all  of  it  is  blank 
it  is  not  always  the  accepted  length.  "To  strut 
about,  the  masters  of  our  people  and  our  state" 
is  four-syllables  good  measure  for  such  a  verse, 
and  "When  Troiia's  prince  first  saw  his  Helen's 

123 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

radiance  gleam"  is  two.  And  "If  I  interpret  thy 
mind  properly"  is  ten  syllables  long,  but  not 
verse.  Mr.  Gregory  is  really  a  very  indifferent 
metrist.  As  to  poetry,  the  music,  the  lilt,  the 
levitation  of  it,  this  is  about  the  best  which  I 
have  been  able  to  find  in  "Caius  Gracchus." 

What  shall  I  gain?    What  does  the  bard  that  sings 

His  song  in  lone  waste  wilds;  the  poet  when 

He  fashions  out  his  measure;  or  when  first 

She  gazes  on  her  infant,  what's  the  gain 

The  mother  hath  of  all  her  rending  pains? 

What  is  their  gain?    What  mine?    A  dream  made  true; 

A  something  yearning,  straining,  here  within, 

That's  brought  to  being. 

Mr.  Dreiser  finds  the  "inspiration"  of  this 
sort  of  thing  "plainly  that  of  Spenser,  Shake- 
speare, Jonson  and  Dryden,  not  uninfluenced  by 
the  refinement  of  Pope. "  A  great  deal  of  inspira- 
tion for  a  very  little  result. 

But  it  is  not  quite  fair  to  Mr.  Gregory,  the 
victim  of  the  extravagant  eulogy  of  an  unwise 
friend,  thus  to  hit  him  over  Mr.  Dreiser's 
shoulders.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Mr. 
Gregory  has  probably  heard  far  more  about  the 
ancients  and  several  other  things  than  Mr. 
Dreiser,  even  though  he  carries  back  the  manners 
of  the  empire  a  couple  of  hundred  years  to  repub- 
lican Rome.  Mr.  Gregory's  dialogue  is  direct  and 
barring  an  occasional  lapse  in  taste,  a  rare 
pseudo-poetic  word  like  "erstwhile,"  and  an  un- 

124 


"CAIUS  GRACCHUS" 

Elizabethan  "he'th"  for  "he  hath,"  he  writes 
good,  average  American  translated  into  the  se- 
cond person  singular.  The  ambitions  scene  of 
the  Furies  should  be  compared,  not  with  Mac- 
beth's  witches  or,  as  Mr.  Dreiser  suggests,  with 
the  "Eumenides  of  Aeschylus,"  but  with — no, 
I  find  no  precise  parallel  in  my  reading  for  this 
unimpressive  effort  in  the  supernatural.  Sounder 
archaeology,  the  realization  of  personality,  co- 
gency in  action,  dramatic  power,  poetic  lift, 
philosophic  vision — and  we  may  yet  have  from 
Los  Angeles,  home  of  the  movies,  a  drama  that 
will  "bear  comparisons."  As  it  is,  "the  greatest 
play  since  Shakespeare"  leads  to  the  inquiry 
once  made  about  "a  dog  after  Landseer" 
"What's  he  after  him  for.?" 


GUITRY'S    ''DEBURAU" 

MR.  H.  GRANVILLE  BARKER,  long  an 
acknowledged  master  in  the  drama  and  in 
stage  craft,  prefixes  a  suggestive  note,  and  all  too 
short,  to  his  translation  of  Sacha  Guitry's  novel 
comedy,  "Deburau."  Here  is  the  translation 
of  a  play  avowedly  made  "for  English-speaking 
actors,"  not  for  the  English-reading  public, 
except  incidentally;  and  the  further  purpose  is 
disclosed  in  the  words  "to  provide  *  *  *  as 
nearly  as  might  be  parallel  opportunities  to  those 
the  French  had  enjoyed  in  the  production  of  the 
play."  While  disclaiming  any  theory  of  dra- 
matic translation,  what  could  be  happier  and  in 
a  way  more  refreshing,^  Somebody  once  de- 
fined translation  as  the  art  of  disfiguring  inno- 
cent books  by  putting  them  into  a  jerkin  in  which 
even  their  own  mother  might  not  know  them. 
The  translator  is  apt  to  mix  up  his  paints  for 
blank  verse,  or  muddle  them  for  prose.  If  not, 
he  may  lose  the  sense  in  riding  after  rhymes  or 
lose  his  rhyme  in  seeking  a  sense  quite  other 
than  that  of  the  original.  Mr.  Barker  says:  "It 
was  easy  and  obvious  then  to  keep  to  the  irregular 
verse,  if  the  difficulty  of  peppering  it  with  rhymes 
was  faced."  This  he  has  done  exceedingly  well, 
preserving,  I  should  say,  in  the  result  not  only 
the  meaning  of  his  original  "detail  by  detail," 

126 


GUITRY'S  "DEBURAU" 

but  keeping  a  certain  ease  and  litheness,  which 
EngHsh  blank  verse  could  not  have  reproduced, 
while  maintaining  a  variety  which  no  set  metri- 
cal form  could  preserve. 

The  comedy  "Deburau"  is  a  huge  Parisian 
success.  Sacha  Guitry,  the  author,  is  the  son  of 
the  contemporary  actor,  M.  Lucien  Guitry,  of  a 
great  and  deserved  reputation.  The  author  has 
added  to  his  fame  as  a  playwright  that  of  an  actor 
and  interpreter  of  his  own  principal  role,  a  cir- 
cumstance the  more  striking  in  that  this  play 
presents  in  Deburau  the  career  of  a  celebrated  ac- 
tor in  whose  footsteps  follows  unexpectedly  and 
triumphantly  his  own  son.  Such  a  parallel 
would  be  sure  to  take  the  Parisian  imagination; 
and  an  artistic  success  in  Paris  should  be — and 
usually  is — echoed  around  the  world.  The  sub- 
ject, too,  in  a  larger  sense,  is  one  of  a  peculiar 
appeal.  The  stage,  the  actor,  that  dual  life,  on 
and  off  the  boards,  a  duplicity,  be  it  said  with  no 
malign  accent  on  the  word,  offering  so  many  con- 
trasts express  and  implied;  Marie  Duplessis, 
'7<2  dame  aux  camelias'''' — for  she,  too,  figures  in 
this  play  though  not  as  in  Dumas — the  deifica- 
tion, or  at  least  the  sentimentalizing,  of  woman- 
hood in  her  most  alluring,  dangerous,  triumphant 
and  pathetic  role  of  the  destroyer:  what  more 
could  be  wanted  of  the  universal  material  of  life 
and  of  the  stage  .^ 

127 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

"Deburau"  is  emphatically  a  comedy  for  the 
stage;  by  which  I  do  not  mean  to  raise  as  to  Mr. 
Barker's  translation,  much  less  as  to  the  original, 
any  question  as  to  that  quality  of  distinction  in 
diction  and  style  which  everybody  knows  is  in 
France  a  condition  without  which  success  must 
be  courted  in  vain.  But  a  play  for  the  stage  is 
one  in  which  the  capabilities  of  the  theatre,  of 
setting,  of  the  spoken  word  and  its  accompanying 
gesture  are  ever  in  the  author's  mind.  A  play 
conceived  for  the  stage  does  not  begin  by  telling 
the  scene  setter,  the  stage  upholsterer,  the  light 
manipulator  and  everybody  else  in  seven  pages 
of  directions  exactly  what  he  must  do,  instead 
of  silently  enlisting  his  services  as  a  humble  and 
inevitable  coadjutor.  And  a  play  for  the  stage 
does  not  throw  the  obvious  in  your  face  in  person 
or  in  dialogue.  The  first  act  of  "Deburau"  is  a 
model  of  suggestion  and  restraint,  as  each  mem- 
ber of  the  troupe  of  the  Theatre  des  Funambules 
stands  out  in  his  personality,  from  the  "barker," 
or  runner,  whose  business  it  is  to  cry  up  l\e  play 
to  passers-by,  to  Robillard,  the  thrifty  manager 
and  the  little — and,  we  may  suppose,  deformed — 
money-taker  who  sends  her  roses  to  the  great 
Pierrot  unbeknown,  and  receives  them  back 
from  him  in  an  outburst  of  careless  and  indis- 
criminate generosity. 

The  character  of  Deburau,  the  actor,  is  as 
128 


GUITRY'S  "DEBURAU" 

subtile  and  natural  as  it  is  French;  a  certain 
delicate  fatalism  pervades  it.  There  is  nothing 
flamboyant  or  self-assertive  in  this  Pierrot,  whose 
very  success  in  his  pantomine  is  silence.  It  is 
only  on  being  roused  that  he  is  drawn  out,  as  by 
the  reporter  in  reminiscence  of  his  past,  by  love 
which  comes  to  him  and  then  flies  away  in  a  trice 
and  in  the  eloquent  passage  of  the  last  act  on  the 
actor's  calling.  For  the  rest,  his  is  a  sweet  com- 
plaisancy  and  content  with  "this  quaint  world" 
s  it  is  and  for  what  fate  will  uncover  to  us,  alas! 
only  too  soon.  He  does  not  want  even  to  know 
who  it  is  that  he  has  found  to  love  after  twenty 
years  of  "running  away  from  women."  And 
when  he  finds  that  his  place  in  Marie's  love  is 
tenanted  by  his  successor,  his  words  are:  "I 
was  just  going,  as  you  see;  I  didn't  mean  to  inter- 
rupt"; for  "fairyland"  is  after  all  not  to  be  his  in 
this  world.  How  should  one  expect  it.^  And 
poor  Pierrot  departs  with  his  little  boy,  his  bird- 
cage and  Fifi,  his  dog. 

Seven  years  pass;  Deburau  has  fallen  ill  and 
is  poor.  He  has  given  over  acting,  but  always  he 
awaits  the  coming  of  the  peerless  lady  who  has 
once  loved  him.  His  son  has  grown  up,  a  fine 
handsome  lad,  secretly  ambitious  to  follow  his 
father  in  his  career.  The  father  is  somewhat 
piqued  at  the  idea  and  there  is  a  charming  bit  of 
insight  into  the  sensitive  nature  seemingly   so 

129 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

callous  that  goes  to  make  up  the  actor's  temper- 
ament. At  last  Marie,  the  beloved,  comes  and 
the  meeting  is  such  as  "fairyland"  contrives  not. 
Marie  has  often  "been  prevented  from  coming." 
Old  Robillard  has  prompted  her  visit,  not  love, 
perhaps  hardly  compassion.  But  she  is  learning, 
now,  too,  what  is  love;  for  she  is  to  lose  her  lover. 
Moreover,  hearing  that  Deburau  is  ill,  she  has 
brought  her  doctor.  "I  have  waited  for  this!" 
says  Deburau.  "For  what.^*  For  you  to  come — 
bringing  your  doctor!  A  doctor — when  you 
are  here!  A  doctor — when  you  are  gone!"  And 
it  is  a  fine  bit  of  irony  that  the  doctor,  not  know- 
ing his  patient  by  name,  should  prescribe  that  to 
rally  his  spirits  he  go  to  the  theatre  to  see  Gas- 
pard  Deburau, 

I  have  no  space  for  the  unexpected  turn  of  the 
last  act  in  which  Deburau  fails  on  the  stage  to 
live  again  in  his  son.  The  eloquence  and  truth  of 
the  fine  passage  about  acting  are  worthy  of  all 
the  praise  that  it  has  received.  It  is  gratifying, 
too,  to  meet  with  so  unconventional  and  so  artis- 
tic a  conclusion.  Why  tie  a  knot  in  every  thread 
when  there  is  joy  and  beauty,  too,  in  the  skein 
unraveled } 


A  TRENCHANT  SATIRE  ON  THE  WAR 

"TILULI"  is  Illusion,  and  it  is  a  pity  that  for 
X_>  clarity's  sake,  in  the  English  translation, 
this  production  was  not  so  called.  The  note 
descriptive,  printed  on  the  temporary  paper 
cover  which  protects  the  binding,  for  the  infor- 
mation of  the  general  reader  and  the  guidance  in 
paiv-icular  of  the  reviewer,  calls  this  book  "a. 
farce. "  And  clearly  the  form,  the  setting  by  way 
of  scene,  the  procedure  by  way  of  dialogue,  all 
is  dramatic;  but  when  we  consider  the  dramatis 
personae,  which  contains  a  score  of  "crowds" 
and  choruses,  distinguishable  each  from  the 
other,  besides  such  personages  as  Master-God, 
Duerer's  Beast,  Polichinello  and  Buridan  the 
Ass,  it  is  plain  that  representation  on  any  stage 
could  scarcely  have  been  contemplated.  The 
designation  "farce,"  too,  is  peculiarly  mislead- 
ing; for  the  situation  of  personal  predicament, 
real  merriment  and  fun  for  fun's  sake,  all  are 
foreign  to  the  ironic,  satirical  atmosphere  of  this 
strange  and  original  production,  its  dealing  in 
masses  by  way  of  abstraction,  its  allegory,  its 
premeditated  confusion,  its  bitter  probing  be- 
neath appearances,  its  sardonic  pessimism.  "Lil- 
uli"  is  really  a  trenchant  satire;  its  subject  the 
disillusion  which  has  fallen  on  our  sometime 
smug   world.     The   author   takes   no   sides,    he 

131 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

spares  none,  and  he  leaves  us  in  the  end  with  no 
hope.  Read  superficially,  it  is  an  unpleasant 
book;  read  carefully,  a  terrible  one. 

I  came  across  "Liluli"  first  a  couple  of 
months  ago.  It  repelled  me.  I  could  not  under- 
stand how  the  author  of  "Jean  Christoph, "  that 
extraordinary  success  in  French  fiction  just  be- 
fore the  war,  could  have  written  such  a  book,  and 
I  failed  to  get  up  the  curiosity  necessary  to  find 
out.  Turning  up  again  in  a  batch  of  books  for 
review  the  other  day,  I  was  stimulated  to  a  se- 
cond reading  and  an  answer  to  this  question. 
Romain  Rolland,  it  will  be  remembered,  was 
sometime  professor  of  the  history  of  music  at  the 
Sorbonne  (University  of  Paris),  a  distinguished 
biographer,  especially  of  Beethoven  and  of 
Tolstoy,  by  which  latter  he  has  been  deeply 
affected  in  his  opinions.  Born  in  Burgundy,  in 
eastern  France,  Rolland,  while  of  many  gener- 
ations of  French  ancestry,  has  none  the  less 
in  him  much  of  the  Teutonic  spirit.  Indeed, 
"Jean  Christoph"  with  its  German  hero,  was 
an  effort  to  reconcile  the  contrasts,  antagonisms 
and  mutual  misunderstandings  which  separate 
Teutonic  and  Latin  cultures;  and  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  conceive  of  one  better  fitted 
for  that  delicate  task  than  Rolland,  with 
his  enthusiasm  at  times  borderng  on  senti- 
mentality,    that    passion    for     art,     especially 

132 


A  TRENCHANT  SATIRE  ON  THE  WAR 

music,  and  that  species  of  transcendentalism 
which  we  associated,  at  least  before  the 
war,  with  the  Germanic  genius.  But  Rolland 
possessed,  too,  the  clear,  logical  training  and 
polish  and  finesse  which  we  associate  as  inevit- 
ably with  the  traditions  and  culture  of  France. 
Wht  .1  the  war  came  M.  Rolland  was  one  of  those 
unfortunates  in  whose  very  veins  the  clash 
of  empires  throbbed.  Born  a  Frenchman, 
though  living  a  cosmopolitan  life,  it  is  not 
for  any  one  to  judge  his  position,  much 
less  his  conduct,  of  which  I  know  little. 
A  man  past  the  years  of  military  service, 
he  appears  to  have  lived  in  Switzerland 
during  the  conflict.  That  he  hated  war  is  as- 
suredly not  to  his  nor  to  any  man's  discredit. 
Whether  he  is,  or  was,  an  actual  pacifist  I  do  not 
know  or  care.  Certainly  the  satire  of  "Liluli" 
accepts  the  text  of  Mercutio:  "A  plague  on  both 
your  houses  1" 

The  setting  in  "Liluli"  is  a  mountainous 
country;  certain  roads  wind  upward  and  across 
the  stage,  leading  to  a  bridge  which  spans  a  deep 
ravine,  splitting  the  stage  from  the  curtain  back- 
ward in  two.  The  chief  actors  speak  from  a  field 
which  occupies  three-quarters  of  the  left  fore- 
ground, which  is  above  the  road.  Crowds  are 
continually  passing  up  the  road,  impelled,  where 
not  by  mere  restlessness,  by  Liluli,  the  goddess  of 

133 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Illusion,  who  sings  like  a  bird  and  floats  rather 
than  walks,  leading  on  her  victims.  Polichinello, 
dignified  cousin  of  English  Punch,  but  provided 
with  the  family  hump — the  deformity  of  satire — 
comments  sardonically  throughout  on  what  is 
going  on;  children  marshalled  by  their  school- 
masters and  restrained  from  looking  about  at  the 
birds  and  the  primroses  as  they  read,  marching 
along,  about  Hannibal  crossing  the  Alps;  the 
dreamer  who  describes  the  landscape  without 
looking  at  it;  the  sensible  man  who  observes 
everything  and  is  none  the  wiser  for  it.  Then 
comes  Janot  in  his  donkey  cart,  typical  peasant 
of  France,  who,  when  the  donkey  balks  at  going 
further,  preempts  his  claim  on  the  spot  where  he 
stops  and  starts  digging  in  his  beloved  mother 
earth.  Soon  comes  Altair,  visionary  youth, 
Florentine,  fair-haired,  following  Illusion  and  a 
form  of  Love  which  Polichinello  declares  2000 
years  out  of  date.  Love  escapes  Altair,  but 
Liluli  at  last  charms  him  to  sleep  and  turns  her 
blandishments  on  Polichinello.  She  offers  him 
anything;  "one  hump  more — or  less,  at  your 
will,"  and  even  he  barely  escapes  her  enchant- 
ment when  on  the  very  brink  of  the  precipice. 

And  now  the  satire  becomes  more  savage. 
In  the  midst  of  two  rival  crowds  extolling  each 
their  scores  of  saints,  Latin  and  Germanic,  there 
enters  "a  handsome,  majestic,  dandified  old  man 

134 


A  TRENCHANT  SATIRE  ON  THE  WAR 

of  slightly  Levantine  accent,  noble  gesture  which 
relapses  into  vulgarity  when  he  is  off  his  guard. " 
He  is  attended  by  Truth,  a  woman  in  Harlequin 
costume,  who  trundles  for  him  his  go-cart  full  of 
''Httle  gods  for  sale." 

"Look,  father,  gods  at  reduced  prices  for 
families,  a  dollar  and  a  quarter  a  pair,  seventy- 
five  cents  each;  a  thoroughly  reliable  article. 
Take  it.^    I'll  let  you  have  it  for  thirty  cents." 

The  hawker  calls  himself  Master-God,  to 
which  Polichinello  replies:  "This  is  all  very 
well,  but  what  of  the  Old  Father.^" 

"What  Father.?" 

"The  Old  Father  up  there.  Are  you  not 
afraid  of  His  wrath  .'^" 

Master-God  is  amused,  but  politely  explains 
that  he  is  really  He,  to  which  Polichinello  says 
"Bah!" 

Later  in  the  play  Truth  is  carried  in  triumph 
blindfolded,  decorated,  bedizened,  cloaked  and 
guarded  by  dervishes,  sentries,  diplomatists  and 
journalists.  She  struggles  free  and  half  naked 
for  a  moment  only  to  be  recaptured  and  robed 
ceremoniously  once  more  while  the  crowd  is 
admonished  to  hide  their  eyes  until  told  when 
to  look. 

Two  groups  of  people,  the  Gallipoulets 
and  the  Hurluberloches  are  picnicking  on 
either    side     of   the  ravine.     They    repair     the 

135 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

bridge  and,  on  good  terms  with  each  other, 
pass  refreshments  and  compHments,  when 
the     diplomatists    intervene: 

"Great  God,  what  are  you  making  a  bridge 
for?  By  what  right?  In  a  state  that  is  well 
ordered  whatever  is  not  permitted  is  interdicted." 

And  they  establish  customs,  excises,  examina- 
tions for  disease  and  demand  that  the  bridge  be 
strengthened. 

"For  what?" 

"For  cannon." 

And  here  Polonius  mounts  the  rostrum  to 
explain:  "Modeste  Napoleon  Polonius,  dele- 
gate of  the  peace  congress. " 

"The  point  in  these  happy  days,"  he  says, 
"is  to  choose,  like  the  rabbit,  with  what  sauce 
you  wish  your  giblets  stewed.  Do  you  prefer 
being  slaughtered  above  ground,  under  ground, 
in  the  air  or  in  the  water?" 

A  ridiculous,  a  saddening  scene  is  that  in 
which  poor  Janot,  forced  from  his  land,  on  his 
ass,  and  Hanot  on  his  German  mule,  meet  on  the 
bridge,  both  good  humored,  each  willing  to  let 
the  other  pass,  until  egged  on  by  the  fat  men 
(profiteers),  the  diplomatists,  the  intellectuals 
and  those  of  fettered  mind,  they  fall  to  fighting 
and  both  roll  over  into  the  abyss.  The  same 
fate  is  that  of  Altair,  the  youth,  and  his  countcr- 

136 


A  TRENCHANT  SATIRE  ON  THE  WAR 

part  and  friend,  Antares.     And  the  intellectuals 
thereupon  remark: 

"They  have  passed.  Oh,  what  an  epical 
spectac'e!  Down  they  roll!  A  glorious  chill  of 
heroic  sweetness  moistens  me  all  up  my  back 
(Don't  lean  over  too  far.)  Oh,  what  a  sublime 
fate!" 

In  the  end  Polichinello,  who  also  dared  not  go 
with  Truth,  thinks  to  escape.  But  everything 
collapses  "fighting  people,  furniture,  crockery, 
poultry,  stones,  earth  and  all."  Polichinello 
disappears  in  the  heap  and  Liluli  sings: 

Wait,  ere  you  laugh  and  mock,  my  friend, 
At  fate,  ah,  wait  until  the  end. 

This  is  but  a  taste  of  this  wholesale  satire  on 
mankind.  I  have  been  unable  to  see  a  copy  of 
"Liluli"  as  the  author  wrote  it.  And  I  rather 
suspect  that  much  of  the  poetry  and  nearly  all  of 
the  style — which  means  so  much  in  anything 
French — has  evaporated  in  the  process  of  trans- 
lation, which  is  anonymous  and  appears  to  have 
been  none  too  well  done.  The  pictures  of 
Mesereel  in  their  grotesqueness  and  studied 
crudity  seem  appropriate  to  a  subject  in  which 
beauty  can  find  no  place. 


NO  IMPROVEMENT  ON  VICTOR  HUGO 

I  FEEL  that  the  author  of  'Clair  de  Lune' 
has  created  what  might  be  called  a  new 
idiom  in  dramatic  writing.  "  Its  curiously  and 
brilliantly  imagined  harmony  of  plot,  characters 
and  background  has  a  strange  and  disturbing 
flavor  which,  once  tasted,  cannot  be  forgotten. 
Over  it  all,  like  the  moonlight  of  its  title,  shines 
the  quality  of  fantasy.  It  is  'such  stuff  as 
dreams  are  made  on.'"  Thus  writes  Mr.  Ed- 
ward Sheldon,  the  well-known  dramatist;  and  on 
reading  "Clair  de  Lune"  we  wonder  at  these 
words.  But  Edward  Sheldon  as  a  dramatic 
critic  is  not  our  topic  today. 

When  I  took  up  this  play  I  said,  as  a  reader 
of  old  fiction — or  must  I  say,  as  an  old  reader  of 
fiction.^  "Ah!  Ursus,  Dea,  Gwymplane!  Of 
course,  'L 'Homme  qui  Rit. '  "  And  I  might 
have  spared  myself  this  recognition  of  the  ob- 
vious, as  a  note  on  the  false  title  declares  that 
"suggestions"  as  well  as  the  names  of  some  of 
the  personages  are  "taken  from"  Victor  Hugo's 
well-known  novel.  I  then  looked  for  some  un- 
published chapters  in  this  touching  and  pathetic 
story.  Sir  Llarry  Johnston  has  of  late  carried  on 
the  story  of  the  Dombeys  and  of  Mr.  Shaw's 
Mrs.  Warren's  eccentric  daughter,  much  to  the 
delectation  of  readers.     But  this  play  is  not  of 

138 


NO  IMPROVEMENT  ON  VICTOR  HUGO 

that  agreeable  type.  In  fact,  it  seems  less  to 
expand  than  to  contract  figures,  incidents  and 
situations  from  Hugo's  ample  pages,  changing 
his  wide  historic  atmosphere  to  the  stifling  arti- 
ficialities of  a  corrupt  and  heartless  court  in  a 
fantastic  no-man's  land  and  losing  in  the  process, 
I  should  say,  most  of  the  human  appeal. 

"The  man  who  laughs,"  which  is  a  better 
translation  than  "The  Laughing  Man,"  it  will 
be  remembered,  is  the  terrible  story  of  a  child  of 
noble  English  parentage,  stolen  out  of  malice  and 
for  revenge,  and  submitted  to  a  horrible  surgical 
operation  by  which  his  facial  expression  is 
permanently  fixed  in  a  hideous  harlequin 
grin.  He  grows  up  in  the  company  of  mounte- 
banks, fathered  by  an  old  man,  absurdly  called 
somewhere  in  this  play  "  a  doctor  of  philosophy, " 
and  a  blind  maiden,  Dea,  who  loves  him  for  the 
real  beauty  of  his  character.  Restored  to  his 
title  and  his  rank,  the  deformed  Gwymplane  suf- 
fers, in  the  circle  of  the  nobility,  the  untold  agony 
which  his  deformity  has  brought  upon  him;  and 
in  the  end  he  returns  to  Dea,  who  alone  under- 
stands him,  only  to  see  her  die  aboard  a  boat  in 
which  they  are  seeking  escape,  he  following  her  to 
his  death  in  the  sea.  There  is  poetry  and  pathos 
in  Hugo's  tale,  and  the  temptation  of  CjW}-m- 
plane  by  a   noble  lady  who   is   unnatural!}-  at- 

139 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

tracted  to  him  by  his  deformity  is  only  an  episode 
in  the  wide  and  varied  scene. 

In  "Clair  de  Lune, "  by  Michael  Strange, 
who  it  is  whispered  audibly  is  really  Mrs.  John 
Barrymore,  this  last-mentioned  incident  becomes 
a  main  feature  of  the  plot.  Relieved  of  its  moon- 
light, the  story  tells  of  a  Queen,  "a  sharp- 
featured,  neurotic-looking  woman, "  we  may  add 
of  middle  years.  She  is  attended,  among  others, 
by  Prince  Charles,  "a  slender,  exotic-looking 
gentleman,"  who  is  her  "cousin"  and  her  heir; 
and  also  by  the  Duchess  of  Beaumont,  a 
younger,  illegitimate  sister  of  hers,  betrothed 
to  Prince  Charles.  Boredom  is  a  common 
characteristic  of  these  titled  people,  and  who 
can  wonder.^  The  betrothed  couple,  who 
loathe  each  other,  are  represented  as  trying 
to  beguile  the  tedious  hours  with  croquet. 
Parenthetically,  mark  how  this  beats  out 
Shakespeare's  Cleopatra  at  billiards.  A  troupe 
of  mountebanks  intervene,  performing  by 
night  in  the  royal  park.  The  jaded  nobility 
wake  up  miraculously  to  the  remarkable  novelty 
of  a  pantomime.  Charles,  out  of  sheer  ennui,  is 
attracted  by  Dea's  beauty  and  arranges  to  have 
her  brought  to  his  apartments;  while  his  precious 
betrothed  as  suddenly  conceives  an  unholy  pas- 
sion for  Gwymplane  and  his  hideous  grin,  and 
also  arranges  an  assignation.    Mrs.  Barrymore's — 

140 


NO  IMPROVEMENT  ON  VICTOR  HUGO 

or  shall  we  say  this  Strange — Gwymplane  is 
further  deformed  with  "distorted  legs,"  though 
exactly  how  he  contrives  to  perform  his  feats  of 
agility  in  the  pantomime  with  this  handicap  is 
not  quite  clear.  The  upshot  of  this  double 
intrigue  of  this  precious  couple,  who  are  to  be 
married  tomorrow,  is  the  discovery  of  each  to  the 
other  and  to  the  Queen,  who  in  the  end  turns  out 
not  the  rival  of  the  Duchess  for  the  love  of 
Charles,  but  the  mother  of  that  now  illegitimate 
Prince,  Gwymplane  being  the  true  heir.  There  is 
a  shadowy  villian,  Phedro,  who  wanders  about 
through  the  play,  but  just  what  he  is  about  it 
would  be  difficult  to  say.  In  some  respects  he 
seems  to  have  been  rather  respectable  compared 
to  Charles  and  his  Queen  and  his  Duchess.  So 
much  for  Mr.  Sheldon's  "brilliantly  imagined 
harmony  of  plot"  and  of  "character"  and  of 
"background." 

Now  for  "the  new  idiom  in  dramatic  writing. " 

"The  Duchess  appears  tomeexactly  likeabent 
hairpin,"  says  theQueen,"adjustingher  lorgnette." 

"Go  along,  Charles.  At  any  rate,  you  have 
a  sort  of  sleight-of-hand  manner  of  looking  at 
your  watch  that  makes  me  rather  nervous," 
says  the  same  "neurotic-looking"  lady. 

"What  in  the  world  is  one  tired  from.'*  What 
does  one  rest  for.^"  maunders  the  weary  Duch- 
ess, "in  a  rather  lost  manner." 

141 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

"A  servant  is  something  to  absorb  the  spittle 
of  their  irritabihty. " 

We  may  agree  with  Mr.  Sheldon  that  this  is 
"a  new  idiom  in  dramatic  writing."  But  some- 
times the  dialogue  strains  at  even  a  further  new- 
ness." 

"  I'll  make  you  feel, "  says  the  wicked  Phedro, 
"as  if  you  were  falling  down  an  abyss  of  knives": 
here  at  least  is  a  threatened  new  sensation.  No 
marvel  that  Gwymplane  calls  Phedro  "a  squint- 
ing rodent,"  and  that  Phedro  retorts  "acidly," 
"His  eloquence  would  steal  the  pollen  from  a 
flower"  sounds  somewhat  like  what  some  people 
sometimes  call  poetry.  No  such  nonsense,  of 
course,  as  any  jingle  of  rhymes  or  swing  of  metre; 
but  "sob  stufl", "  thus:  "I  feel  as  if  we  were  in  a 
black  barge  upon  a  scarlet  sea,  as  if  in  a  moment 
it  would  dip  over  the  horizon  line  and  we  should 
be  lost  forever  together."  Or,  "I  see  a  million 
pale  ribbons  fluttering  through  gray  vapor. 
They  are  widening  into  rivers  of  color,  into  vast 
dazzling  spaces  and  some  divine  form  is  shining 
through  now  and  sweeping  all  the  darkness  away 
oflf  the  world,  with  his  golden  wings."  There  is 
nothing  like  this  in  Victor  Hugo.  Is  this  possibly 
what  Mr.  Sheldon  calls  "the  quality  of  fantasy".'* 

That  a  blind  girl  should  be  sent  down  a  long 
avenue  of  cypresses  to  stop  at  the  "first white 
marble  door"  is  a  trifle.    Even  that  the  distorted 

142 


NO  IMPROVEMENT  ON  VICTOR  HUGO 

hero,  saluted  as  Prince  Ian  of  Vancluse,  in  the 
scene  of  discovery — of  pretty  nearly  everything — 
should  cry  out  "Oh,  I  cannot  stand  this  hellish 
whirl  another  Instant.  It  is  biting  my  ankles  off" 
— strange  occupation  for  a  "hellish  whirl"  to  be 
biting  a  hero's  ankles — even  this  is  trivial  or  per- 
haps merely  "such  stuff  as  (some  folks')  dreams 
are  made  on,"  to  quote  the  dramatic  critic  once 
more.  Less  like  a  dream  and  more  like  the  ban- 
alities of  a  decadent  spirit  is  the  loss  In  nobility 
and  interest  of  every  one  of  Victor  Hugo's  figures 
and  their  degradation  into  a  series  of  inconse- 
quent and  meaningless  marionettes,  whose  only 
resemblance  to  human  beings  is  in  their  essential 
vulgarity  and  immorality.  Perhaps  the  glamor 
of  other  lights  than  that  of  the  moon,  handsome 
costumes  and  scenery  and  the  conjunction  of  two 
notable  personages  of  the  stage  in  the  cast  may 
make  this  kind  of  thing  go  for  a  time.  But  to 
any  one  modestly  acquainted  with  poetry,  drama 
and  the  stage,  it  is  repugnant  to  all. 


"THE  EMPEROR  JONES  " 

THIS  volume  contains  three  plays  of  the  kind 
that  act,  and  by  an  author  obviously  at  home 
in  the  workmanship  of  the  stage.  By  this  I  do  not 
mean  one  who  has  so  self-consciously  labored  in 
his  craft  that  the  scaffolds  on  the  buildings  of  his 
construction  are  still  standing;  but  rather  one  to 
whom  the  stage  and  its  methods  are  simply  a 
means  to  the  effective  telling  of  his  story.  These 
plays  are  in  the  popular  mode  which  chooses  to 
represent  the  drama  of  the  ordinary  man  in  the 
ordinary  events  of  an  ordinary  life:  that  is  all 
with  a  saving  reservation  assuredly  for  "The 
Emperor  Jones."  But  he  would  be  a  strange 
reactionary  who  would  go  back  to  the  old  idea 
that  in  the  hero  there  must  be  always  something 
heroic,  something  dilated  with  the  exaggeration 
of  romance,  distorted  with  unusual  crime,  de- 
corated with  extraordinary  virtues.  To  be  sure, 
in  this  banishment  of  the  heroic  we  have  lost  not 
a  little,  but  possibly  the  most  that  we  have  lost 
is  novelty.  Although  I  suppose  that  it  must  all 
come  back  to  the  old  question,  shall  the  author 
seek  to  arouse  an  emotion  in  his  auditors  which 
shall  find  expression  In  the  words,  "How  strange!" 
or  shall  he  be  content  with  what  after  all  may  be 
the  more  difficult  task,  elicit  the  exclamation, 
"How  true." 

144 


"THE  EMPEROR  JONES" 

There  is  no  side  in  any  of  these  plays,they 
are  written  simply,  directly,  in  the  speech  proper 
to  the  characters  concerned.  There  is  no  at- 
tempt to  get  the  reader  off  the  ground  and  they 
would  be  none  the  better  for  such  an  attempt. 
"Diff'rent"  is  what  Mr.  Shaw  would  call  an  un- 
pleasant play.  Caleb,  a  young  captain  of  a 
whaler  in  a  small  New  England  port,  is  about  to 
marry  Emma,  the  daughter  of  a  fellow  captain 
and  a  neighbor.  The  young  people  have  grown 
up  together  and  the  bride-to-be,  of  a  romantic 
turn  of  mind,  nourished  more  or  less  on  cheap 
fiction,  prides  herself  on  Caleb's  and  her  differ- 
ence from  those  about  them.  But  a  tale  is  told 
her  of  Caleb  in  his  last  voyage  and  of  the  brown 
girls  of  Tahiti,  or  one  of  them  at  least,  and  of  a 
trick  that  his  fellows  put  up  on  Caleb.  Caleb 
is  too  honest  to  deny  the  truth  and  Emma  refuses 
to  marry  him,  as  after  all  he  has  proved  not  to  be 
"diff'rent."  The  two  remain  friends,  however, 
Caleb  always  hoping.  Thirty  years  later,  on  his 
last  coming  home  he  finds  his  poor  old  love 
utterly  infatuated  with  a  worthless  nephew  of 
his  who  works  upon  her  folly  for  what  he  can  get 
out  of  it.  She  has  transformed  her  staid  old 
home  with  gaudy  curtains  and  hangings,  vlc- 
trola  and  the  like,  and  Caleb's  favorite  chair  has 
been  sent  to  the  attic.  The  picture  of  the  old 
doting  woman,  in  short  skirts,  high-heeled  shoes 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

and  powdered  face  is  repulsive  in  the  exteme 
and  so  unusual  a  departure  from  that  norm  which 
after  all  has  something  to  do  with  fiction,  as  it 
has  to  do  with  life,  that  we  recoil  from  it  as  from 
a  thing  unnatural.  And  yet  it  is  a  tribute  to 
Mr.  O'Neill's  art  that  we  do  so  recoil.  In  the  up- 
shot Caleb  hangs  himself  and  Emma,  pitifully 
disillusioned,  follows  him. 

"The  Straw"  is  less  unpleasant,  concerning 
as  it  does  the  passionate  soul  of  a  young  con- 
sumptive and  how  she  stirs  a  fellow  patient  into 
a  realization  of  his  powers  to  write,  what  was  to 
him  a  flirtation  at  first  ending  on  the  verge  of 
tragedy  in  the  union  of  the  doomed  young  couple. 
There  is  good  character  sketching  in  the  Car- 
mody  family,  from  the  brute  drunkard  father  to 
the  children,  but  all  this  and  the  scene,  chiefly  in 
a  sanatorium,  is  depressing.  However,  "why 
should  art  be  joyous.^"  says  our  friend,  M.  Fin 
du  Siecle.  "Life  is  not  joyous;  life  is  even  very 
depressing."  "But  art  has  nothing  to  do  with 
life,"  says  another  of  our  new  critics.  "Then 
why  be  miserable.?"  queries  still  another. 
Whether  I  like  a  given  subject  or  not  is  one  sort 
of  a  question;  whether,  the  subject  granted,  the 
work  upon  it  is  well  done,  is  quite  another.  Mr. 
O'Neill  has  drawn  his  figures  to  the  life,  what 
more  have  we  a  right  to  demand.'* 

146 


"THE  EMPEROR  JONES" 

But  among  these  plays  "The  Emperor  Jones  " 
is  "diff'rent, "  and  in  every  wise  deserving  the 
praise  which  I  have  recently  seen  bestowed  upon 
it  by  reviewers  and  the  success  which,  in  the 
skilful  hands  of  Charles  Gilpin,  the  negro  actor, 
it  has  had  upon  the  stage.  Emperor  Jones  is  a 
some-time  Pullman  car  porter  who,  escaped  from 
justice  for  killing  a  cheating  pal  over  a  game  of 
crap  and  felling  the  guard  of  his  chain  gang,  has 
made  his  way  to  one  of  the  West  India  islands 
and  become  the  "emperor"  of  the  day.  We  meet 
him  after  his  siesta  on  the  last  day  of  his  rule. 
His  entire  "court"  to  the  last  old  woman  has 
deserted  him,  and  to  the  sound  of  the  distant 
beat  of  the  tom-tom,  which  he  knows  means  the 
gathering  of  all  his  some-time  subjects  against 
him,  he  plans  to  make  his  way  across  the  island 
in  the  night  to  a  French  gunboat  and  make  his 
escape  to  the  fat  bank  account  which  his  extor- 
tions have  gathered  and  which  awaits  him  in  a 
neighboring  port.  In  conversation  with  a 
cowardly,  taunting  cockney  Englishman,  his 
accomplice,  all  this  is  brought  out;  and,  likewise, 
the  supreme  confidence  which  Emperor  Jones, 
tricked  out  in  his  taudry  uniform,  has  in  himself 
and  his  ability  "  wid  trash  niggers  like  dese  yere, " 
to- "outguess,  outrun,  outfight  an'  outplay  de 
whole  lot  o'  dem  ovah  de  board  any  time  o'  de 
day  er  night!" 

147 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Emperor  Jones  has  his  superstitions,  how- 
ever, one  is  that  only  a  silver  bullet  can  kill  him, 
and  his  revolver  after  the  other  chambers  shall 
have  been  exhausted  contains  one  such  bullet 
for  need  should  there  ever  be  need.  By  nightfall 
he  reaches  the  place  on  the  border  of  the  forest 
where  he  has  cached  his  food,  but  in  the  ap- 
proaching darkness  he  fails  to  find  it.  He 
plunges,  however,  into  the  forest  with  its  weird 
blackness  and  glinting  moonbeams.  As  he 
wanders  on  alternately  confident  but  with  rising 
fears,  as  the  tom-tom  throbs,  visions  come  to 
him.  In  terror  he  sees  once  more  Jim,  whom  he 
had  killed  at  crap,  and  in  desperation  fires  one  of 
his  precious  bullets  at  the  spectre.  Again  he  sees 
the  chain  gang  and  the  guard  whom  he  is  about 
to  fell  with  his  spade,  and  another  chamber  of 
his  revolver  discharged  frees  him  of  that.  A 
vision  of  the  slave  mart  and  his  old  mammy 
about  to  be  sold  takes  still  another  until,  stripped 
and  torn  in  his  struggle  through  the  jungle,  he 
lives  over  again  in  imagination  the  ancient  beast 
worship  of  his  African  forefathers  and  sacrifices 
his  last,  his  one  silver  bullet,  to  the  destruction 
of  the  crocodile-god  about  to  devour  him.  Of 
course,  his  shots  have  located  him  and  his  ene- 
mies are  upon  him.  And  in  the  end  he  is  drawn 
out  of  the  jungle,  a  pace  or  two  from  where  he 
entered  it,  shot  to  death  with  the  silver  bullets 

148 


"THE  EMPEROR  JONES" 

for  the  Incantations  attending  the  casting  of 
which  the  Voodoo  tom-toms  had  beaten  all 
night.  "Emperor  Jones"  Is  original  as  It  Is  force- 
ful. The  atmosphere  of  the  moonlit  forest 
jungle,  pulsating  with  the  throb  of  the  tom-tom, 
rising  and  falling  with  the  fears  and  hallucin- 
ations of  Jones,  reaching  a  trumpet  crash  and 
then  silence  with  his  death;  the  sure,  persistent 
touch  In  the  portrayal  of  that  strange  mixture  of 
confidence  and  cowardice  so  peculiarly  true  to 
the  type  represented;  the  mastery  of  the  dialect 
of  Jones — these  are  fine  things  finely  done. 


THE  STAGE  FROM  BETTERTON 
TO  IRVING 

IN  PROFESSOR  ODELL'S  "Shakespeare 
From  Betterton  to  Irving"  we  have  an  ex- 
ceedingly interesting  and  valuable  book,  all  the 
more  so  because  the  author  has  allowed  his  ma- 
terial, which  is  abundant  and  well  ordered,  to 
tell  his  story.  And  that  story  concerns  the  for- 
tunes of  the  Shakespearean  plays  on  the  stage 
from  the  reopening  of  the  theatres  on  the  return 
of  King  Charles  to  a  time  within  our  own  con- 
temporary recollection,  including  not  only  the 
stage  history  of  the  plays,  but  the  manner  of 
their  presentation  and  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
text  at  the  hands  of  managers,  actors,  amenders, 
theorists  and  moralists. 

There  is  a  nice  question,  much  mooted  in  the 
books,  as  to  whether  Shakespeare  is  better  read 
or  better  seen  on  the  stage,  and  of  course  the 
answer  must  depend  on  the  nature  of  the  reading 
and  the  seeing,  which  is  much  the  same  thing  as 
the  reader  and  the  seer.  The  hearing  of  "The 
Merchant  of  Venice"  or  "Cymbeline"  as  the 
late  Dr.  Horace  Howard  Furness  used  to  read 
them  was  a  rare  privilege  and  a  precious  memory. 
But  even  more  vivid  is  our  recollection  of  the 
Shylock  of  Irving,  of  Miss  Terry's  Portia  and 
Beatrice,  and  the  Hamlet  of  Forbes  Robertson. 

150 


THE  STAGE  FROM  BETTERTON  TO  IRVING 

Indubitably  a  play  which  will  not  act  is  not  a 
play,  whatever  other  fine  name  it  may  go  by. 
And  it  is  always  a  marvel  how  actable — I  had 
almost  written  how  actorproof — Shakespeare  is. 
His  plays  are  really  difficult  to  spoil  on  the  stage, 
although  it  is  amazing  how  frequently  that  dif- 
ficult feat  is  accomplished.  Professor  Odell's 
book  casts  a  flood  of  light  on  just  this  point, 
affording  us  in  the  process  a  singular  commen- 
tary on  the  growth  of  British  taste  and  appre- 
ciation, alike  for  the  art  of  acting  and  for  the 
larger  significance  of  Shakespeare's  works. 

Nothing  is  so  conservative  and  traditional  as 
the  stage,  nor  can  anything  be  more  certain  than 
the  gradual  evolution  of  its  successive  features 
from  age  to  age,  however  bewildered  we  may  be- 
come at  times  in  the  details.  At  the  Restoration 
a  very  definite  process  of  change  in  the  stage  it- 
self had  already  set  in.  To  Burbage,  who  first 
played  the  great  tragedy  parts  in  Shakespeare's 
lifetime,  the  stage  was  a  platform  for  declama- 
tion. The  auditors  in  the  pit  actually  stood 
about  it  on  three  sides,  and  such  meager  decora- 
tions as  the  time  afforded  were  confined  more  or 
less  to  the  rear.  The  stage,  now  for  over  lOO 
years,  has  become  a  picture,  framed,  in  which 
the  decorations  have  assumed  the  similitude  of 
the  actual  by  means  of  scenes  and  flies  fashioned 
in  perspective.     A  careful  perusal  of  Professor 

151 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Odell's  book  gives  us  the  steps  by  which  this 
transformation  has  come  about,  with  much 
diverting  detail  by  the  way.  For  example,  the 
absence  of  a  drop  curtain  on  the  old  stage,  meet- 
ing with  the  demand  for  a  change  of  scene,  re- 
sulted In  the  absurd  practice  of  changing  the 
scene  with  the  actors  on  the  stage.  It  does  not 
seem  to  have  occurred  to  any  one  that  a  curtain 
might  be  lowered  at  such  a  moment,  and  then 
raised.  It  was  a  generation  after  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  drop  curtain  before  anybody  thought 
of  lowering  it  between  the  acts.  And  when  at 
length  that  momentous  possibility  was  realized 
a  painted  drop  was  devised,  similar  to  the  scenes 
which  had  formerly  remained  set  In  the  inter- 
missions, the  green  baize  curtain  being  reserved 
to  mark,  as  formerly,  the  conclusion  of  the  play. 
But  If  the  simplicity  and  Incongruity  of  the 
scenes  even  In  comparatively  late  times  amuse 
us,  even  more  ludicrous  to  our  senses  is  the  old 
costuming.  It  Is  surprising  how  recent  a  devel- 
opment Is  that  of  consistency  of  setting  and  cos- 
tume— I  will  not  speak  of  historical  accuracy, 
for  that  is  quite  outside  of  the  question.  We 
laugh  at  the  incongruity  of  the  medieval  sacred 
plays  which  conceived  of  the  Nativity  as  taking 
place  amid  the  rigors  of  a  Yorkshire  winter,  but 
neither  Pope,  an  editor  of  Shakespeare,  nor 
Fielding,  a  great  novelist,  would  have  seen  any 

152 


THE  STAGE  FROM  BETTERTON  TO  IRVING 

incongruity  in  Macbeth  attired  in  a  full  bottom 
wig — as  became  the  dignity  of  tragedy — and  the 
red  coat  and  gold  lace  trappings  of  a  contem- 
porary British  major  general.  The  reader  may 
see  this  figure  in  the  frontispiece  of  Rowe's 
"Shakespeare,"  1709,  reproduced  by  Professor 
Odell,  and  he  may  likewise  see  from  the  same 
work  Hamlet  attired  as  Dr.  Johnson  and  his 
mother  seated  in  the  likeness  of  Queen  Anne 
beneath  a  portrait  of  "the  buried  majesty  of 
Denmark, "  arrayed  as  the  Duke  of  Marlborough. 
It  would  appear  that  a  certain  conventional 
wardrobe  was  accepted  for  the  stage  for  several 
generations,  and  it  consisted  of  three  sorts.  First 
in  order  of  antiquity  came  costume  d  la  Romaine, 
a  cuirass,  lofty-crested  helmet,  buskins  and 
heavy  gloves.  That  delightful  tragedy  garment, 
the  sweeping  toga,  doughtily  to  be  tossed  over 
the  shoulder,  had  not  yet  come  in.  Secondly, 
there  was  the  Asiatic-heroic,  involving  flowing — 
very  flowing — robes,  a  turban,  towering  and 
feathered,  and  a  scimitar;  and  lastly,  there  was 
the  European,  no  matter  of  what  era,  represented 
by  the  costume  of  the  moment,  or  rather  a  limp 
or  so  behind.  The  dresses  of  the  actresses  of  old 
time  were  simply  awesome.  No  one  could  then 
complain  of  scanty  attire  upon  the  stage.  The 
question  was  to  find  the  woman  in  the  caparisons. 
When    Mrs.    Bracegirdle    acted    the    "Indian 

153 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Queen,"  bcfeathered,  befurbelowcd  and  be- 
fanned,  with  two  black  pages  bearing  up  a  stu- 
pendous train  and  supporting  a  canopy  rather 
than  an  umbrella  over  her  head,  there  could 
have  been  very  little  room  for  anything  else  on 
the  stage.  Even  as  late  as  1778  Mrs.  Hartley, 
as  Cleopatra,  her  hair  d  la  pompadour,  her 
spreading  robes  of  state,  hooped  and  garlanded, 
throned  voluminously  on  a  Chippendale  arm- 
chair— she  must  have  been  quite  unapproachable 
even  by  Antony. 

Another  interesting  feature  of  Professor 
Odell's  work  is  the  complete  account  which  he 
gives  of  the  acting  versions  of  Shakespeare's 
plays.  The  awe  and  veneration  in  which  we  hold 
every  syllable  of  the  Shakespearean  text — the 
grave  attention  which  we  give  to  what  James 
Russell  Lowell  once  called  "every  Elizabethan 
goose-print "^ — was  in  no  wise  characteristic  of 
our  English  forefathers.  Shakespeare  had  taken 
his  own  wherever  he  found  it;  why  should  not 
his  followers  take  of  Shakespeare  whatever  they 
chose  .^  And  they  certainly  did  exercise  this 
prerogative  from  the  scandal  of  Dryden's  "Temp- 
est,"  in  which  a  boy  who  had  never  seen  a  girl 
is  created  to  match  Miranda  who  had  never  seen 
a  boy,  to  the  farces  cut  out  of  the  comedies, 
"Macbeth,"  Davenanted  into  an  opera,  and 
"King    Lear"  Tatified  into  a  comedy  ending. 

154 


THE  STAGE  FROM  BETTERTON  TO  IRVING 

However,  some  of  these  remakings  of  Shake- 
speare for  the  stage  are  not  so  reprehensible. 
The  conditions  of  staging  had  changed  as  well  as 
the  public  taste,  and  some  of  the  adaptations, 
such  as  that  of  "Richard  III,"  by  Colley  Gibber, 
really  make  for  dramatic  unity  and  coherency. 
It  may  not  be  generally  appreciated  that  this 
particular  version  of  Gibber  has  held  the  stage 
almost  to  today.  The  late  Mr.  Mansfield  acted, 
I  believe,  no  other.  As  to  earlier  times,  the  great 
Garrick  never  acted  "King  Lear,"  except  with 
Tate's  happy  ending  in  which  Lear  is  restored  to 
all  of  his  five  wits  and  Gordelia  married  to  Edgar, 
while  the  same  great  actor's  acting  version  of 
"Romeo  and  Juliet"  arranged  for  the  lovers  a 
tender  meeting  in  the  tomb  before  death  over- 
whelmed them. 

Tampering  with  the  classics  is  a  very  serious 
offense.  But  this  is  the  point  of  view  of  the 
scholar.  We  should  never  cease  to  rejoice  that 
Shakespeare  was  not  a  scholar,  but  a  dramatist 
and  an  actor  and  a  manager  as  well  as  a  poet. 
I  think  that  Shakespeare  would  have  been  the 
last  man  to  regard  the  text  of  his  plays  as  sacro- 
sanct. The  usages  of  his  stage,  as  of  ours,  ad- 
mitted alterations,  cutting,  adjustment,  change 
and  adaptation.  This  was  what  Shakespeare 
did  to  his  predecessors  and  what  he  would  have 
welcomed — and   what   he   certainly  got — at   the 

155 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

hands  of  those  who  followed  him;  though  it  is  to 
be  confessed  that  success  alone  can  justify  the 
process,  and  he  is  a  bold  man  who  dares  attempt 
this  species  of  literary  surgery.  Wherefore  let  us 
not  quarrel  with  the  late  Sir  Beerbohm  Tree 
for  making  a  spectacle  of  "Henry  VIII,"  with 
Henry  Irving  for  reducing  the  twenty-six  scenes 
of  "King  Lear"  to  sixteen  or  with  anybody's 
Hamlet  because  it  is  not  given  complete,  as  Mr. 
F.  R.  Benson  once  gave  it,  "in  six  long,  dismal 
hours."  There  is  no  space  to  comment  on  the 
wealth  of  Professor  Odell's  gatherings  in  later  as 
well  as  in  these  earlier  times.  His  book  with  its 
reproductions  in  picture  is  invaluable. 


ANOTHER  VOLUME  OF  "SHELBURNE 
ESSAYS" 

ANOTHER  volume  of  "Shelburne  Essays" 
>  is  always  welcome  and  a  matter  of  moment 
to  readers  who  care  for  the  better  things  in  liter- 
ature and  for  fresh  and  sane  views  on  the  ten- 
dencies of  current  thought.  For  Mr.  Paul  Elmer 
More  is  not  only  an  independent  student  of  the 
past,  he  is  likewise  an  original  thinker  as  to  things 
of  the  present;  and  it  is  the  combination  of  these 
two  qualities  which  has  given  him  his 
popularity  alike  as  the  sometime  editor  of  what 
was  once  the  best  of  our  more  intelligent  week- 
lies and  as  an  essayist  whose  essays,  in  the  pre- 
sent volume  reaching  the  eleventh  series,  have 
become  one  of  the  standard  exhibits  of  the  solid- 
ity and  health  of  American  criticism.  As  with 
the  former  volumes,  the  essays  contained  in  this 
have  been  variously  contributed  to  magazines  or 
delivered  in  lectures  as  that  on  "The  Spirit  and 
Poetry  of  Early  New  England, "  which  was  one 
of  the  TurnbuU  lectures  at  Johns  Hopkins 
University.  The  substance  of  the  essays  on 
Jonathan  Edwards  and  Emerson  was  contri- 
buted, we  are  informed,  to  "The  Cambridge 
History  of  American  Literature."  None  the 
less  it  is  good  to  have  fugitive  writings  and  uttcr- 

157 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

ances  such  as  these  collected  and  revised  in  a 
form  which  has  this  final  sanction  of  their  author. 

To  demand  continuity  in  a  volume  of  col- 
lected essays  would  be  as  absurd  as  a  like  de- 
mand of  the  variety  of  conversation.  Indeed, 
the  essay  is  after  all  only  glorified  monologue  and 
as  dependent  as  the  monologue  on  the  personality 
of  the  man  who  talks.  Mr,  More  hits  a  happy 
mean  between  the  familiar  essay,  for  success  in 
which  one  must  be  born  fascinating,  and  the 
formal  essay,  in  which  ministration  at  the  high 
altars  of  criticism  demands  the  sacerdotal  trap- 
pings of  the  oracle.  What  is  far  more  important 
than  any  manner  is  the  matter  and  the  angle 
from  which  things  are  observed.  Mr.  More  has 
much  to  bring  us,  and  he  brings  it  always  ade- 
quately, often  delightfully. 

As  to  the  glorification  of  New  England  which 
has  gone  on  now  steadily  since  the  Mayflower 
first  anchored  in  sight  of  that  "rock-ribbed 
shore,"  a'  cynic  once  remarked  that  it  was  justi- 
fied by  the  necessity.  The  perfections  of  New 
England,  in  which  the  climate  must  always  be 
considered  and  reprobated,  are  tiresome  in  their 
reiteration;  the  more  so  that  all  these  praises  are 
so  undoubtedly  based  on  ''rock-ribbed"  facts. 
One  who  is  not  a  New  Englander,  except  by 
summer  occupation,  sometimes  wonders  whether 
those  really  to  the  manner  born  protest  so  much. 

1^8 


ANOTHER  VOLUME  OF  "SHELBURNE  ESSAYS" 

But  these  remarks  are  irrelevant  to  the  clear- 
sighted discussions  of  this  part  of  Mr.  More's 
book.  However,  while  it  may  be  just  to  consider 
the  "poetry"  of  Mistress  Ann  Bradstrect  or 
Urian  Oakes  with  the  allowance  that  it  came  out 
of  an  unpoetic  stock,  transplanted  into  an  austere 
climate  in  which  only  the  sternest  of  the  virtues 
theologically  watered  could  flourish,  still,  after 
all,  is  this  kind  of  versified  meditation  and  moral- 
izing really  poetry  at  all,  and  not  rather  the  kind 
of  thing  which  marks  poetical  negation?  I  be- 
lieve that  Thoreau  somewhere  indulges  in  an  ap- 
preciation of  the  beauties  of  the  music  of  an 
accordion.  This  passage  is  not  a  proof  that 
Thoreau's  Puritan  nature  was  softened  by  the 
concord  of  sweet  sounds.  It  merely  shows  that, 
true  to  his  stock,  there  was  no  real  music  in  him. 
One  thing  I  must  protest.  No  one  of  these  old 
New  England  platitudes  in  verse  is  comparable 
to,  much  less  referable  in  any  wise  to,  "Nosce 
Teipsum, "  the  fine  philosophical  poem  of 
Elizabethan  Sir  John  Davies.  To  read  one  page 
of  Davies  will  settle  that.  But  I  note  there,  as 
very  rarely,  Mr.  More  has  been  betrayed  by  "a 
great  authority."  The  comparison  of  Mistress 
Bradstreet  to  Sir  John  was  the  late  Professor 
Wendell's,  not  Mr.  More's. 

Of  the  New  England  essays  I  like  best  that  on 
Jonathan  Edwards.     Mr.  More  is  at  his  best  in 

159 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

that  difficult  region  In  which  philosophy  abuts 
upon  religion,  and  a  clearer,  a  more  justly  sym- 
pathetic estimate  of  Edwards,  who  dwelt  verily 
at  the  heart  of  Puritanism,  might  be  sought  for 
elsewhere  in  vain.  There  are  some  keen  bits  of 
insight,  too,  on  the  much  overwritten  topic, 
Emerson.  What  could  be  simpler,  for  example, 
than  "Emersonianism  may  be  defined  as  roman- 
ticism rooted  In  Puritan  divinity .f"'  or  the  thrust: 
"It  is  significant  of  this  confidence  in  individual 
inspiration  that  generally  in  Emerson,  as  in  other 
poets,  it  tends  to  looseness  and  formless  spon- 
taneity of  style ".f*  It  Is  a  genuine  contribution, 
too,  to  our  understanding  of  the  Puritan  spirit  to 
have  pointed  out  to  us  the  parallel  between  Ed- 
wards In  his  "revolt  against  the  practice  of  the 
communion  as  a  mere  act  of  acquiescence  in  the 
authority  of  religion"  and  Emerson's  similar  and 
equally  logical  revolt  based  in  a  disavowal  of  any 
conformity  in  faith  and  a  demand  in  its  stead  of 
"the  entire  liberty  of  each  soul  to  rise  on  its  own 
spiritual  impulses." 

Among  the  essays  dealing  with  later  times, 
of  Henry  Adams  possibly  we  have  had  enough 
and  more  than  enough.  Mr.  More  is  very  enter- 
taining on  that  entertaining  topic  and  even  more 
so  in  "Samuel  Butler  of  Erewhon, "  whose  enig- 
matic personality  emerges  under  the   essayist's 

i6o 


ANOTHER  VOLUME  OF  "SHELBURNE  ESSAYS" 

hand  in  a  way  quite  striking.  Butler  is  of  course 
a  seasoning,  not  a  food,  but  a  condiment  a  taste 
for  which  is  to  be  acquired.  Mr.  More  helps  in 
the  acquisition  and  provokes  in  the  reader  of 
"Erewhon"  and  "The  Way  of  All  Flesh"— which 
is  a  detestable  story,  by  the  way — a  desire  to 
read  further. 

In  "Evolution  and  the  Other  World,"  "Eco- 
nomic Ideals"  and  "Oxford,  Women  and  God," 
the  essayist  touches  some  of  the  most  important 
of  our  contemporary  issues.  The  first  of  these 
declares  very  definitely  against  what  is  almost  an 
obsession  of  our  time,  the  application  of  the 
theory  of  evolution,  usually  as  misunderstood,  to 
things  to  which  it  is  utterly  inapplicable;  although 
the  essay  very  justly  concludes  with  the  remark: 
"It  is  not  a  new  thing  that  a  sound  intuition 
should  be  supported  by  an  untenable  theory." 
In  the  last  of  these  it  is  asked  why  the  admission 
of  women  to  Oxford's  cloistered  society  and  the 
banishment  of  God  should  have  synchronized. 
But  Mr.  More  is  too  wise  a  man  to  hazard  an 
answer.  Lastly,  in  "Economic  Ideals"  we  have 
set  forth  our  mania  for  combinations  further  to 
enhance  mechanical  mastery  over  nature  and  the 
contrasted  mania  for  combinations  to  protect 
man  as  an  individual  from  man  as  a  machine. 
Most  pertinently  does  the  author  ask  if  both  are 

i6i 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

not  referable  to  that  terrible  uncertainty  that 
haunts  us  day  and  night  and  if  we  have  gained 
much  in  the  substitution  of  this  fear  of  our  fellow 
man  for  the  old-fashioned  fear  of  God.  These 
are  great  topics  even  to  name  in  one  paragraph. 
But  be  it  remembered  that  a  review  is  no  real 
short  cut,  but  only  a  guide  post,  pointing,  let  us 
hope,  in  the  right  direction. 


A  SOUND  ENGLISH  CRITIC 

THIS  volume  is  made  up  of  a  score  of  leaders 
and  special  articles,  variously  contributed 
by  the  author  and  now  happily  collected  under  a 
caption  which,  however,  is  somewhat  misleading. 
For,  save  for  two  or  three  essays  which  have  to 
do  with  reviewing,  the  critic  and  the  labors  of 
authorship,  the  book  is  less  concerned  with  the 
art  of  letters  than  with  English  writers  biograph- 
ically  and  personally  considered  as  well  as  ap- 
praised by  way  of  their  achievement  in  poetry 
and  in  prose.  The  work  comes  under  that  wide 
title,  a  book  about  English  literature,  and  this 
generous  subject  extends  from  gossip  to  meta- 
physics, and  from  esthetic  criticism  all  the  way 
back  to  anecdotage.  To  those  who  really  love 
books  and  the  people  who  make  them,  to  those 
who  devoutly  believe  that,  with  all  their  short- 
comings, the  poetry,  the  novels  and  the  letters  of 
an  age  better  represent  its  spirit  than  its  history 
or  its  laws,  no  such  book  can  be  unwelcome. 
And  Mr.  Lynd's  acquaintance  with  his  subject- 
matter  is  as  honest  and  complete  as  his  views  are 
sensible  and  helpful. 

There  is  an  unpretentiousness  about  this  vol- 
ume, too,  which  is  pleasing.  Here  is  no  flourish 
by  way  of  preface;  a  short  dedicatory  letter  to  a 
personal  friend  suffices.     There  is  no  putting  of 

163 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

the  best  foot  forward,  only  a  rough  chronological 
ordering  which  places  Mr.  Pepys  very  inaus- 
piciously  in  the  lead,  presented  in  one  of  his  least 
really  important  aspects;  however,  it  is  one 
which,  like  the  treasure  of  a  Swiss  villager,  is 
noisomely  heaped  in  the  front  yard  for  traveler 
and  guest  to  stumble  over.  Mr.  Lynd 
has  not  even  assumed  that  his  book  is  important 
enough  to  index,  so  that  a  reader  might  recur  to 
something  he  liked.  I  recall  how  the  Nation  be- 
fore the  twilight  of  the  godkins  used  to  dilate  on 
the  choice  corner  reserved  in  the  next  world  for 
such  as  published  books  unindexed.  But  I 
should  rather  lay  this  omission  in  the  present 
case  to  modesty  than  to  neglect,  for  after  all  it  is 
assuming  something  in  this  day  of  hurry  and 
reading  by  snatches  to  presuppose  that  sedulous 
pottering  over  a  book  which  suggests  the  nec- 
essity of  a  complete  and  labored  index. 

Passing  by  one  or  two  shorter  pieces,  the 
paper  on  Donne  is  of  considerable  fullness,  em- 
phasizing, as  is  the  manner  in  these  days,  the 
actualities,  the  autobiographicalities,  if  one  dare 
employ  so  lengthy  a  word.  The  eroticism  of 
Donne  needs  not  too  strong  an  emphasis  on  the 
second  syllable,  for  neither  he  nor  his  age  was 
degenerate.  This  feature  in  Donne  has  always 
seemed  to  me  a  part  of  that  experimental  nature 
which    was    so    essentially    his.      When    Donne 

164 


A  SOUND  ENGLISH  CRITIC 

studies  the  stars,  he  is  apt  to  stray  into  astrology; 
science  takes  him  into  alchemy;  theology  even 
into  the  scrutiny  at  least  of  heresy  and  schism. 
So  love,  of  which  no  English  poet  has  left  a  purer, 
more  ethereal,  a  more  completely  metaphysical 
conception,  took  Donne  by  the  way  into  forbid- 
den paths  out  of  a  species  of  curiosity  rather  than 
because  of  sensualism.  Mr.  Lynd  is  thus  right  in 
considering  Donne  "the  supreme  example  of  a 
Platonic  lover  among  the  English  poets, "  as  he  is 
also  just  in  recognizing  in  him  "the  completest 
experimenter  in  love." 

A  sympathetic  piece  of  insight  is  the  pleasant 
paper  on  Horace  Walpole,  who  is  aptly  described 
as  "a  china  figure  of  insolence,"  one  who  "lived 
on  the  mantlepiece  and  regarded  everything  that 
happened  on  the  floor  as  a  rather  low  joke." 
However,  the  author  is  not  unjust  to  this  "doer 
of  little  things  in  a  little  age,  "  one  only  too  appre- 
ciative of  his  own  small  place  in  the  order  of  time. 
This  idea  of  the  miniature  nature  of  the  world  of 
the  eighteenth  century  recurs,  much  to  the  illum- 
ination of  the  subject.  There  is  light  in  the  des- 
ignation of  Cowper's  genius  as  "not  that  of  a 
poet,  but  of  a  letter  writer,"  and  it  is  interesting 
to  be  made  to  realize  to  what  an  extent  Gray  was 
a  poet  of  the  afterthought.  He  was  years  over 
the  famous  "Elegy,"  reaching  a  greater  perfec- 
tion with  each  revision.     Has  there  ever  been  his 

165 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

like  in  reticence  since  the  beginning  of  time? 
Better  provided  with  aunts — we  may  assume 
indulgent,  affectionate,  maiden,  tea-drinking 
aunts — than  any  poet  in  English  literature. 
Gray  let  no  one  of  them,  nor  even  his  own  mother 
know  that  he  wrote  poetry.  Such,  alas,  was  the 
soil  of  poetry  in  a  genteel  age!  Mr.  Lynd's  ex- 
cellent paper  on  Edward  Young  as  a  Critic  will 
come  as  a  surprise  to  some  who  feel  that  they 
know  English  literature.  What  could  be  better 
in  these  days  of  the  unread  and  much  belauded 
classics  than  this  of  Young .^  "The  less  we  copy 
the  renowned  ancients,  we  shall  resemble  them 
the  more.  Become  a  noble  collateral,  not  an 
humble  descendant  from  them." 

It  is  impossible  to  treat  in  so  brief  a  space  the 
many  good  things  of  this  book.  The  author 
turns  the  tables  neatly  on  certain  conservative 
writers  who  have  claimed  that  outspoken  hater 
of  war  and  injustice,  Dean  Swift,  for  their  own. 
Even  Coriolanus  is  shown  not  to  be  so  cer- 
tain an  example  for  the  Tory  spirit  to  exult  in. 
Mr.  Lynd  pursues  an  excellent,  if  somewhat  un- 
usual method,  in  the  treatment  of  several  authors 
of  a  certain  complexity  of  nature.  Instead  of 
taking  that  complexity  in  all  its  difficulty  and 
floundering  in  it,  he  views  Shelley,  for  example, 
first  startlingly  though  with  entire  justice,  as 
"a  character  half-comic,"  secondly  as  "the  ex- 

i66 


A  SOUND  ENGLISH  CRITIC 

perimenter, "  lastly  as  "  the  poet  of  hope. "  This 
gets  us  further  in  our  understanding  than 
Arnold's  famous  "beautiful  and  ineffectual  an- 
gel, "  although  it  serves  us  with  no  such  charming 
a  literary  label.  I  find,  too,  the  treatment  of  George 
Meredith  both  suggestive  and  informing.  His 
exotic,  false  pride  and  unadaptability  of  nature 
needs  only  to  be  thus  clearly  stated  to  carry  with 
it  conviction;  and  the  emphasis  on  his  Anglo- 
Irish  blood  explains  much. 

Passing  the  interesting  papers  on  Mr.  Saints- 
bury  and  Mr.  Gosse,  the  two  English  critics 
whose  roots  are  in  the  Victorian  age,  but  who 
have  survived  adaptable  and  proficient  in  their 
art,  and  likewise  omitting  the  just  appraisement 
of  some  of  our  contemporary  Georgians,  Mr, 
de  la  Mare,  Mr.  Sassoon  and  some  others,  the 
final  essays  of  this  volume  are  taken  up  with  the 
matters  which  give  to  the  book  its  title.  Mr. 
Lynd  is  orthodox  in  theory  as  to  poetry,  criticism 
and  the  like.  But  his  orthodoxy  is  of  the  reason- 
able sort,  and  he  is  both  willing  and  able  to  give 
an  account  of  it.  If  we  are  to  regard  poetry,  for 
instance,  as  a  resolution  of  order  out  of  the  chaos 
of  nature,  it  is  fair  that  we  recognize  that  this  is 
an  order  "not  imposed  from  without  but  con- 
trolled from  within."  The  poet  and  not  the 
grammarian  is  he  who  "sets  up  the  rules."  Mr. 
Lynd  makes  no  objection  to  the  idea  that  criti- 

167 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

cism  may  be  praise,  but  it  must  be  the  praise  of 
that  which  in  the  product  concerned  is  vitally- 
praiseworthy.  Correspondingly,  he  accepts  the 
alternative  function  of  blame;  but  blame  of  that 
wherein  the  thing  may  have  fallen  short  of  its 
own  design,  not  blame  that  it  fails  to  reach  some 
extraneous  and  preconceived  standard.  As  to 
the  last  paper  on  book  reviewing,  the  present 
reviewer  will  lay  it  to  heart,  not  so  much  that  it 
diflPers  in  theory  so  much  from  his  own  orthodoxy 
in  ideal  and  would-be  practice,  but  that  it  is  well 
to  have  the  laws  of  Mount  Sinai  ever  before  us, 
however  in  the  frailty  of  the  flesh  we  may  from 
time  to  time  deviate  from  them. 


SOME    FORGOTTEN   TALES   OF 
HENRY  JAMES 

TWENTY  years  ago  the  present  reviewer 
would  have  been  more  deeply  interested 
in  this  book  than  he  can  feel  himself  today.  At 
that  period  he  was  more  "versed"  in  American 
fiction  and  likewise  far  better  read  in  the  short 
story.  For  those  were  the  simple  days  when 
we  fell  into  heated  discussions  as  to  the  "bold 
realism"  of  "Daisy  Miller"  or  the  outspokenness 
of  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham"  and  wondered 
whether  such  things  transcended — or  fell  below — 
the  level  of  dignified  art;  whether  Howells  could 
hope  to  maintain  the  said  literary  level  when 
"The  Europeans"  of  Henry  James  appeared; 
whether  a  certain  obscurity  of  diction  was  not 
a  mark  of  distinction  and  the  like.  But  much 
has  passed  in  twenty  years  and,  with  many  lesser 
things,  both  of  these  distinguished  novelists,  the 
American  who  elected  to  remain  an  American, 
and  the  American  who  heightened  the  Bostonian 
in  his  temperament  by  becoming  a  British  subject. 
Twenty  years  ago  people  wrote  short  stories 
in  innocent  oblivion  of  all  the  nice  little  rules  and 
pretty  little  distinctions  which  have  since  been 
formulated  and  codified  respecting  this  happy 
and  lucrative  branch  of  the  writing  of  fiction. 
The  momentous  discovery  that  a  short  story  is 

169 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

not  a  story  that  is  short,  but  a  new  genre — I  had 
nearly  written  gender —  in  Hterature,  only 
properly  to  be  designated  as  a  "short-story," 
or  even  more  intimately  a  "  shortstory, "  had  not 
as  yet  been  made.  And  the  amiable  gentlemen 
who,  howsoever  they  do  not  themselves  "short- 
story,"  none  the  less  teach  the  new  art  by  pre- 
cept, correspondence  and  otherwise,  had  not  as 
yet  begun  their  chorus  of  tedious  iteration. 

The  volume,  "Master  Eustace,"  follows 
"A  Landscape  Painter"  in  collecting  five  more 
stories  of  Henry  James  "which  originally  ap- 
peared in  American  periodicals,"  but  which  "for 
some  reason  unknown"  were  never  issued  by  the 
author  "in  book  form  in  this  country."  These 
stories  will  be  welcomed  by  lovers  of  James  and 
of  good  writing,  and  I  take  it  that  the  two  classes 
are  very  much  the  same;  but  they  will  be  recog- 
nized by  the  judicious  as  of  unequal  merit.  The 
writer  of  the  preface  to  this  volume,  Mr.  Mordell, 
is  disposed  to  discover  a  projection  of  the  author 
again  and  again  in  these  tales.  I  cannot  but 
think  rather  more  highly  of  the  art  of  Henry 
James  than  this.  The  greatest  artist  sees  only 
with  his  own  eyes,  to  be  sure;  but  the  very 
first  condition  of  the  art  of  fiction  is  that 
power  of  sympathy  which  enables  the  writer 
to  sink  himself  in  the  point  of  view,  if  not  in  the 
personality,  of  personages  of  his   creation.     In 

170 


SOME    FORGOTTEN   TALES   OF   HENRY   JAMES 

this  very  book  the  first  story  is  told,  and  I  should 
say  effectively  told,  by  an  elderly  observant  lady 
attendant,  and  it  properly  exhibits  the  limita- 
tions of  such  a  personality,  not  once  transcending 
them.  ''A  Light  Man"  once  more  derives  its 
power,  which  is  considerable,  from  the  revelation 
of  a  selfish,  petty  and  essentially  dishonest  per- 
sonality who  tells  the  story.  I  have  never  been 
wholly  captured  by  Henry  James,  so  that  I  bow 
joyfully  under  his  yoke  as  under  that  of  greater 
conquerors  such  as  Hardy  or  George  Meredith; 
but,  remembering  James  in  larger  draughts  than 
the  lees  of  a  small  volume  of  neglected  minor 
stories,  I  acknowledge  in  him  a  subtler  artist 
than  this. 

"The  less  of  a  volume  of  neglected  minor 
stories  the  better"  is  putting  it  strong.  And  yet 
nobody  is  likely  to  deny  this  as  to  the  trivial, 
almost  banal,  "Theodolinde, "  a  pot-boiler  which 
the  fastidious  taste  of  the  author  of  "The  Por- 
trait of  a  Lady"  or  "Europe,"  which  Mr.  Ford 
Maddox  Hueffer  calls  "that  most  wonderful  of 
all  stories,"  would  assuredly  never  have  cared  to 
see  exhumed  from  the  temporarypagesof  a  certain 
American  magazine;  it  would  be  invidious  to  say 
which.  "Benvolio"  is,  to  be  sure,  delightful,  and 
I  notice  that  it  appeared  twice  in  English  re- 
prints, evidently  with  the  author's  sanction. 
Indeed,  a  nice  question  might  be  raised  here  as  to 

171 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

an  author's  rights  in  posthumous  suppression. 
Few  modern  writers  have  suflPered  from  the  reti- 
cence of  editors,  executors,  publishers  and  the 
Hke.  And  the  discarded  leavings  of  great  authors 
seem  to  possess  a  strange  fascination  for  a  cer- 
tain type  of  mind,  which  might  be  described  as 
Boswellian  were  to  do  so  not  an  affront  to  an  ad- 
mirable man  who  knew  what  to  do  with  a  trifle 
when  he  had  picked  it  up.  No  man  can  toil  in 
the  busy  workshop  of  this  life  without  scattering 
a  few  chips  and  leaving  a  few  rough  drafts  and 
abortive  sketches  lying  about  after  he  has  de- 
parted, and  these,  whether  "escaped  into  print" 
or  not,  are  only  too  often  carefully  gathered  up 
and  displayed  in  bulk  windows  to  the  discredit 
and  scandal  of  his  art.  As  to  the  stories  of  this 
volume,  I  have  already  said  that  they  are  un- 
equal, although  there  is  not  one  which  has  not 
that  touch  of  distinction  in  style  which  makes 
the  reading  of  Henry  James  a  pleasure,  whether 
you  contrive  to  become  interested  in  the  story 
which  he  has  to  tell  or  not. 

Not  the  least  notable  thing  about  this  dis- 
tinguished man  of  letters — this  philosopher 
writing  fiction  as  his  famous  brother,  the  psychol- 
ogist, William  James,  was  a  novelist  writing 
philosophy — is  the  circumstance  that  Henry 
James  has  enjoyed  an  enormous  popularity  for 
one  who  is,  when  all  has  been   said,   after  all, 

172 


SOME    FORGOTTEN   TALES   OF   HENRY   JAMES 

caviar  to  the  general.  As  I  look  back  at  a  ran- 
dom acquaintance  with,  I  confess,  only  too  few  of 
the  imposing  list  of  the  stories  of  James,  short 
and  long,  I  find  myself  recalling  remarkably  few 
of  his  personages  which,  with  their  adventures, 
are  secondary  to  the  personality  of  the  novelist, 
which  is  always  present  in  his  work.  Perhaps  I 
have  been  unfair  to  Mr.  Mordell  in  what  I  have 
written  above;  and  that  what  strikes  him  in 
"Benvolio"  as  an  autobiographical  projection, 
so  to  speak,  into  the  picture,  is  the  very  thing 
which  I  have  just  expressed  somewhat  otherwise. 
Here  again  an  interesting  query  arises.  Why  do 
the  strongest  natures  among  writers  so  often 
shroud  their  personality  in  difficulty,?  For  there 
is  a  certain  difficulty  in  reading  Henry  James, 
exquisite  though  the  medium  in  which  he  ex- 
presses his  thought  and  certain  as  you  can  be 
that  it  is  thought — never  emptiness,  as  with  some 
who  are  enigmatic — which  he  is  expressing.  I 
do  not  possess  an  answer  offhand  to  this  ques- 
tion, but  I  know  that  acquaintanceship  with 
such  is  precious,  for  words,  as  this  world  goes, 
are  less  often  the  sumptuous  raiment  of  a  true 
nobility  than  a  preposterously  ample  cloak  in 
which  to  hide  chattering  beggary  of  thought. 

Let  us  welcome,  then.  Master  Eustace,  some- 
what unconvincing  though  that  melodramatic 
young  person  remains,  and  let  us  accept  "Long- 

173 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

staff's  Marriage, "  although  we  may  be  skeptical 
as  to  the  symmetry  of  any  story's  working  out 
like  that  in  life.  "Theodolinde"  is  forgivable 
for  the  charming  description  of  a  very  pretty 
woman,  and  "A  Light  Man"  is  a  fine,  if  forbid- 
ding, piece  of  psychological  insight.  But  when 
my  friend.  Professor  Phelps,  declares  that  "even 
Thomas  Hardy  can  hardly  dramatize  the  irony 
of  life  more  powerfully"  than  James  does  in 
this  particular  volume,  I  must  protest  even 
against  Delphi.  Whatever  the  truth  is  as  to  the 
larger  canvases  painted  at  length,  in  these 
lesser  sketches  in  pencil  of  James  there  is  none 
of  the  stroke,  the  bite,  the  deep  velvet  line  of 
him  who  wrote  "Life's  Little  Ironies." 


THE  VERITABLE  QUEEN  OF 
ENGLISH   FICTION 

THIS  is  a  somewhat  naive  little  book.  After 
the  many  works  which  the  fame  of  Jane 
Austen  has  attracted,  books  of  criticism  and 
appraicement,  of  collections  and  biography,  after 
the  publication  long  sinceof  unfinished  fragments, 
some  of  them  never  intended  by  the  author  for 
publication,  and  of  such  letters  as  a  kind  of 
prudery  on  the  part  of  her  sister,  Cassandra, 
in  particular,  had  not  succeeded  in  destroying, 
we  may  certainly  feel  that  we  have  harvested 
and  gleaned  up  all  on  this  subject  that  there  was 
left  for  us  to  know.  And  it  can  as  certainly  not 
be  said  that  Miss  Austen-Leigh's  volume  has 
more  than  a  few  corroboratory  crumbs  to  offer. 
And  yet  if  the  reader  happens  to  be  of  that  choice 
and  devoted  brother  and  sisterhood  who  feel, 
perhaps  rather  than  know,  that  Jane  Austen  is, 
without  question  and  compare,  the  veritable 
queen  of  English  fiction,  it  is  a  joy  to-finger  over 
these  little  personal  things  that  once  were  hers, 
be  they  no  more  than  a  reproduction  of  the 
pleasing  and  well-known  Zoffay  portrait,  penciled 
drawings  of  Steventon  and  Chawton,  "ac- 
counts" from  her  father's  Parish  Register  in 
her  exquisite  handwriting  and  charades — we 
should  call  them  riddles — with  which  these  cheer- 

175 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

ful,  gentlefolk  of  a  simpler  age  beguiled  the  ted- 
ium of  the  long  winter  evenings  when  ways  were 
foul  and  social  life  beyond  the  family  circle  im- 
possible. 

It  is  fair  to  say,  however,  that  Miss  Austen- 
Leigh  has  been  urged  to  the  pleasant  task  of 
compiling  her  little  book,  less  to  preserve  such 
mementoes  as  these  than  to  protest  against  a 
tendency  in  critical  writings  about  her  great 
kinswoman  of  late  to  appraise  Jane  Austen  some- 
what narrowly  and  in  the  direction  of  negation 
rather  than  by  way  of  a  reconstruction  of  what 
we  have.  Miss  Austen-Leigh  repels  the  accus- 
sation  that  Jane  Austen  did  not  love  children,  I 
should  say,  both  successfully  and  conclusively. 
And  taking  a  position,  which  I  am  sure  most 
lovers  of  the  delicate  and  consummate  art  of  Jane 
Austen  would  think  altogether  unnecessary, 
Miss  Austen-Leigh  argues  in  one  of  her  chapters 
for  a  certain  serious  intent  which  she  finds  in 
Jane's  emphasis  of  repentance  as  a  motive  in 
most  of  her  stories.  The  morality  of  the  arts  is 
always  a  dangerous  subject;  and  there  is  a  type 
of  mind  which  remains  unsatisfied  with  the  play 
which  does  not  preach  and  the  novel  which  does 
not  moralize.  Jane  Austen  wrote  no  such  im- 
proving books  for  the  young  and  others  as  did 
her  distinguished  and  forgotten  contemporary, 
Hannah  Moore,   for  example.      But   does  Jane 

176 


THE  QUEEN  OF  ENGLISH  FICTION 

Austen  need  justification  along  these  lines,  with 
her  eye  for  truth,  her  power  of  analysis  in  a  flash, 
her  delicious  wit  and  her  sound  heart?  When 
Miss  Austen-Leigh,  in  a  chapter  sagely  headed 
"Morality,"  quotes  Jane  as  writing  "I  am  very 
fond  of  Sherlock's  Sermons  and  prefer  them  to 
almost  any,"  we  wonder  if  she  mentally  added 
"sermons."  Jane  was  quite  capable  of  such  an 
equivoke.  The  salt  of  a  ready,  wholesome  wit 
was  in  her. 

It  seems  that  Jane  Austen  has  been  the  sub- 
ject of  late  of  a  dissertation.  ^'Sa  vie  et  son 
oeuvre*''  have  been  scrutinized  ^'^parLeonieVillard, 
Agregee  de  rUniversite,  Docteur  es  lettres,''^ 
and  the  doctorate  has  been  bestowed  by  the 
Sorbonne.  One  wonders  how  Jane  would  have 
received  the  news  of  so  unheard-of  a  wonder. 
A  woman  doctor,  too,  at  that.  Now  a  doctor's 
dissertation  is  a  grave  matter,  to  the  "docteur" 
and  to  others,  and  the  "reaction" — as  the 
psychologists  have  taught  us  to  say — the  reac- 
tion of  a  young  French  woman  studying  at  Paris 
in  191 5  to  the  novels  of  a  young  English  woman 
of  a  century  ago,  whose  subject  was  her  own  con- 
temporary life  in  whatwas,  after  all,  almost  wholly 
the  provinces,  is  decidedly  interesting.  I  have 
unhappily  not  been  able  to  see  Mile.  Villard's 
thesis;  but,  of  course,  as  Miss  Austen-Leigh  in- 
forms us.  Mile,  thinks  "Mees  Austen"  of  a  hun- 

177 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

dred  years  ago  narrow,  parochial  and  wanting  in 
religious  feeling.  She  cites  "  authorities  "  to  show 
that  the  Church  of  England  was,  in  Miss  Aus- 
ten's day,  "destitute  of  religious  fervor,"  "a 
thing  made  up  of  traditional  rites,"  wherefore 
no  one  of  Miss  Austen's  novels  deals  with  the 
salvation  of  a  soul,  we  may  suppose;  and  many 
other  important  things  unknown  to  Jane  and 
to  her  world  are  wanting.  It  is  a  prevalent 
doctoral  temptation  to  judge  a  thing  meticu- 
lously for  what  it  is  not  and  never  could  be; 
and  this  method  of  judgment  is  not  confined  to 
the  doctoral  thesis.  Jane  Austen  did  not  travel; 
she  ought  to  have  traveled.  She  did  not  write 
romances,  "historical  romances  on  the  house  of 
Coburg, "  as  suggested  by  the  Prince  Regent's 
librarian.  Dr.  Clarke;  she  had  the  good  sense  not 
to.  But  people  who  write  historical  romances 
are  supposed  to  have  a  wide  range  of  ideas. 
Jane  Austen  was  not  learned,  nor  a  linguist,  nor 
scientific,  nor  a  poetess;  ergo,  she  must  have 
been  narrow.  And  valiant  Miss  Austen-Leigh 
rushes  to  the  defense  to  prove  that  her  Jane 
knew  a  little  French  and  a  little  less  Italian,  that 
she  painted  prettily,  was  a  skilful  needle-woman, 
wrote  charades,  was  "the  best  musician  in  an 
unmusical  family"  and  had  really  traveled  as  far 
as  Bath  and  Southampton  and  even  London. 

178 


THE  QUEEN  OF  ENGLISH  FICTION 

Genius  is  not  to  be  measured  by  these  trivial 
standards.  Let  us  be  frank  about  it.  The  esti- 
mable provincial  life  of  the  gentry  of  the  England 
of  Jane  Austen  was  narrow  and  restricted,  intel- 
lectually, socially  and  spiritually.  And  Jane 
really  "knew"  no  other  life  than  that  in  which 
she  had  been  reared.  She  shared  in  its  limita- 
tions. I  am  willing  to  accept  the  somewhat  sple- 
netic report  of  Miss  Mitford's  mother  that  Jane 
was  at  one  time  "the  prettiest,  silliest,  most 
affected,  husband-hunting  butterfly  she  ever  re- 
membered, "  remembering  that  the  observer  was 
herself  young,  perhaps  not  so  pretty  and  not  yet 
married.  And  I  will  also  accept  the  very  dif- 
ferent remark  of  another  young  woman  that 
"silent  observation  from  such  an  observer  (as 
Miss  Austen)  was  rather  formidable. "  This  was, 
of  course,  much  later.  Allowing  for  the  reti- 
cence in  woman,  which  was  then  regarded  as  an 
eighth  to  the  seven  cardinal  virtues,  it  is  im- 
possible to  believe  that  so  ready  and  witty  a 
writer  was  not  ready  and  witty  in  conversation, 
though  Jane  appears  to  have  been  a  woman  of 
kind  heart  and  an  admirable  self-control.  She 
was  doubtless  very  variously  estimated  by  those 
who  knew  her,  and  the  gamut  of  her  rich  person- 
ality ranged  all  the  way  from  a  love  of  company 
and  dancing  to  the  deepest  and  tenderest  insight 
into  character  and  emotion.    The  candor  of  Jane 

179 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

Austen's  young  people  in  their  love  of  pleasure 
is  delightful.  Miss  Kirkland  has  recently  written 
a  witty  essay  on  "Victuals  and  Drink  in  Jane 
Austen."  I  hope  that  she  may  be  prevailed  on 
to  write  another  on  "Husband  Hunting  in  Jane 
Austen."  Why  not  accept  the  world  as  it  is? 
It  is  because  Jane  Austen  does  precisely  this,  be- 
cause she  is  interested  in  the  trifles  that  go  to 
make  up  daily  life  and  character,  because  she  is 
absolutely  clear-sighted  and  a  great  artist  in  her 
power  to  transfer  all  this  to  her  pages,  that  she 
is  the  inimitable  novelist  that  she  is.  The 
measure  of  art  is  ever  qualitative.  Leave  quanti- 
tative analysis  to  science.  The  subject  is  noth- 
ing; it  is  the  degree  to  which  the  thing  under- 
taken approaches  perfection  that  counts.  With 
the  approach  to  perfection  as  our  criterion,  the 
degree  of  achievement  in  the  thing  undertaken, 
Jane  Austen  stands  almost  alone. 


THE  NEW  STONE  AGE 

WHAT  an  anthropologist  or  an  archaeologist 
or  other  specialist  might  say  about  this 
book  I  have  absolutely  no  means  of  determining. 
Exactly  what  I  am  to  do  with  it  is  a  question 
which  only  the  completion  of  this  review  can 
tell.  I  am  a  layman,  simple  and  innocent  in  this 
whole  matter;  innocent  except  for  a  big  book, 
the  title  of  which  and  its  author  I  have  forgotten 
after  the  manner  of  unscientific  people.  This 
was  a  book  about  round  heads  and  long-headed 
people  in  a  sense  apparently  very  different  from 
the  historical  roundhead  or  the  business  long- 
headed man.  Another  really  delightful  book  of 
my  reading  was  Mr.  Osburn's  about  this  very 
stone  age,  and,  latterly,  I  have  read  the  resume 
of  the  whole  subject  so  delightfully  told  by 
Mr.  Wells  in  his  "  Outlines  of  History, "  so  severely 
criticised  by  those  who  have  not  read  it.  I  can 
see  that  I  am  properly  one  of  Professor  Tyler's 
readers  of  this  pre-history,  as  he  calls  it,  "intel- 
ligent and  thoughtful, "  let  me  hope,  and  certainly 
"puzzled"  in  a  multiplicity  of  "facts,"  at  times, 
may  I  say  it  without  offense,  all  but  "smothered 
in  surmise." 

The  most  striking  thing  about  a  book  such  as 
this  is  the  extraordinary  conviction  which  it 
must  carry,  to  the  thinking  man  of  the  absolutely 

i8i 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

provisional  character  of  all  our  scientific  learning. 
Here  is  the  careful  gathering  together  of  an 
enormous  mass  of  material,  remains,  shell,  stone, 
metal,  ceramic  and  other  of  man's  prehistoric 
life  on  the  globe,  as  variously  described  and  inter- 
preted by  hundreds  of  investigators,  with  addi- 
tional matter  touching  geology,  geography, 
climate  and  all  the  sciences  of  life  at  one  end, 
history,  philology,  language,  folklore  and  re- 
ligion at  the  other.  It  is  fair  to  Professor  Tyler 
to  say  that  he  warns  the  reader  again  and 
again  of  the  uncertainties  of  interpretation,  the 
incompleteness  of  knowledge,  the  dangers  of 
inference  and  the  like.  The  process  of  reading 
this  book  is  like  a  perilous  journey  over  floating 
cakes  of  ice  with  deep  water  and  wide  water 
yawning  between.  We  are  secure  on  a  little 
island  for  a  moment  or  two  only  to  take  a  peri- 
lous leap  to  the  next  cake;  we  balance  daintily 
on  a  neatly  floating  assertion  or  slip  on  an  infer- 
ence which  we  fear  is  going  to  topple  over  with 
us,  only  to  repeat  these  dangerous  leaps  from 
one  uncertainty  to  the  next.  I  confess  that 
when  shore  was  reached — or  was  it  only  the 
bordering  morass  of  the  folklore  margin  of  his- 
tory.?—  I  breathed  a  sigh  of  relief.  But  solid 
ground  there  can  be  none  in  such  a  subject.  I 
wonder  where  solid  ground  is  left  us  anywhere, 
for  that  matter.     We  used  to  find  it  in  religion. 

182 


THE  NEW  STONE  AGE 

But  there  my  solid  ground  was  not  your  solid 
ground.  We  used  to  find  it  in  the  laws  of  gravi- 
tation. But  Dr.  Einstein  with  his  doctrine  of 
relativity  has  upset  all  that.  We  used  to  think 
that  we  were  conveying  a  sort  of  solidity  in 
knowledge  to  the  young  in  our  colleges  and 
universities.  But  Mr.  Edison  tells  us  that  col- 
lege boys  do  not  know  anything.  Do  their  pro- 
fessors.^ Does  Mr.  Pldison.^  Science  is  coming 
be  a  disheartening  affair. 

Out  of  the  water  we  came,  out  of  the  ooze  and 
slime;  onto  the  land,  where  we  developed  lungs; 
into  the  trees,  where  we  developed  hands  and 
prehensile  tails;  out  of  the  trees  onto  the  ground, 
again,  where  we  learned  to  walk  upright  and,  I 
suppose,  became  apprehensive  instead  of  pre- 
hensive.  And  now  we  go  back  into  the  water 
without  gills  and  up  into  the  air  without  organic 
wings.  Cave  dwellings,  pit  dwellings,  lake  dwell- 
ings, dolmens  and  other  big  stones  and  struc- 
tures, for  burial  or  ritual;  shell  implements,  stone 
axes,  flint  knives,  at  last  copper  and  bronze;  so 
the  ever-fascinating  story  runs  with  its  infer- 
ences as  to  various  races,  their  migrations,  their 
modes  of  life,  the  routes  of  trade,  their  ideas  and 
superstitions.  The  tale  of  prehistoric  man  is 
fascinating  for  what  we  know,  even  more  so  as  to 
what  we  do  not  know.  The  most  important  steps 
seem  the  least  certain.     I  cannot  m.ake  out  what 

183 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

it  is  that  distinguishes  a  man  from  an  ape  either 
in  this  book  or  in  actual  Hfe  for  that  matter. 
Has  Gardner  got  us  nearer  the  solution  of  the 
question  how  speech  arises  in  man?  Were  there 
once  talking  apes?  Were  there  speechless  men? 
Or,  harder  to  believe,  speechless  women?  Is 
there  a  better  story — or  at  least  one  more  scien- 
tific— than  that  of  Prometheus  as  to  that  mo- 
mentous step,  the  discovery  by  man  of  the  use  of 
iire  ?  Did  property  beget  the  idea  of  strongholds, 
or  only  the  impulse  of  the  hunted  beast  to  escape 
an  enemy?  Things  like  this  are  discussed  less 
in  books  of  this  kind  than  questions  as  to  whence 
came  the  Aryans,  for  example.  Professor  Tyler 
registers  carefully  the  wise  words  of  warning, 
uttered  long  ago  by  Max  Muller,  as  to  the  word 
Aryan;  how  it  means  "neither  blood,  nor  bones, 
nor  hair,  nor  skull,"  but  merely  language.  But 
the  rest  of  this  very  chapter  generalizes  at  once 
as  to  races,  customs,  Celts,  Indo-Europeans 
and  the  like.  The  origin  of  Aryan  culture  in 
the  North,  the  East  or  the  West  seems  a  trivial 
matter.  Suppose  we  can  put  the  linger  on  the 
spotwhereon  lived  the  first  Aryan  family.  Would 
it  matter?  And  who  was  A4r.  Aryan's  grand- 
father? And,  pray,  what  was  Mrs.  Aryan's  mo- 
ther's family  after  all?  1  rather  suspect  that  this 
whole   subject  of  origins   in   northern   "kultur" 

184 


THE  NEW  STONE  AGE 

among  the  Germans  is  a  learned  bit  of  that 
propaganda  to  which  the  war  opened  our  eyes. 
Professor  Tyler  has  what  seems  to  me  a  strange 
notion  to  the  effect  that  the  Teutonic  stock  "  were 
never  good  mixers."  Good  mixers  is  precisely 
what  they  are.  Goths,  Vandals,  Lombards, 
Northmen,  Normans,  Angles,  all  are  Teutonic 
and  all  mixed  admirably  with  whatever  people 
they  came  into  contact  with,  taking  on  new 
languages,  customs  and  what  not.  The  mixed 
blood  of  these,  the  ruling  peoples  of  the  earth, 
is  their  glory. 

However  it  may  beget  question,  it  is  just 
such  popular  gatherings-in  and  appraisements  of 
what  the  learned  world  is  doing  that  help  us 
laymen  in  our  doubts  and  therefore  in  our 
arduous  steps  in  knowledge.  It  is  interesting  to 
know  just  what  domestic  animals  the  lake 
dwellers  had,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  surmise  the 
agricultural  occupations  of  prehistoric  woman. 
But  I  wonder  who  made  the  first  needle  or  in- 
vented the  safety  pin  which  was  not  unfamiliar 
among  the  Etruscans.  I  am  not  sure  that  such 
questions  are  quite  as  profitable  as  surmises, 
between  6000  and  20,000  years,  B.  C.,  for  the  be- 
ginnings of  Neolithic  man.  How  we  are  obsessed 
with  beginnings  and  endings!  Perhaps  there 
never  was  a  first  man,  or  he  may  have"  occurred" 

185 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

simultaneously  or  successively  in  a  score  of  places 
and  perhaps  there  is  to  be  no  end.  The  old 
philosopher  who  recognized  only  "becoming," 
an  eternal  state  of  change  and  flux,  most  closely 
guessed  at  truth.  We  are  on  our  way,  whence 
and  whither.?  Do  we  know.''  We  may  guess 
theologically,  scientifically  or  metaphysically; 
all  these  guesses  are  merely  different  points  of 
view.  Satisfying  answer  there  is  none.  But 
why   should  anybody  be  satisfied.? 


A  BREATH  OF  FRESH  AIR 
ON  EDUCATION 

THIS  is  a  book  after  my  own  heart.  Have 
you  ever  held  pecuHar  views  for  years  and 
been  looked  at  askance  by  your  friends,  smiled 
at  indulgently,  allowed  for  until  you  have  be- 
come silent,  not  with  the  silence  of  acquiescence, 
but  with  the  silence  that  comes  from  that  ter- 
rible question:  "What's  the  use?"  Well,  such 
is  my  case  as  to  the  schools  as  men  have  made 
them  and  as  to  the  men  who  have  made  the 
schools.  And  here  is  one  of  the  elect — for  the 
elect  are  they  who  write  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
— who  has  justified  my  heresies,  expressing  in 
criticism  upon  criticism  ideas  which  conform  to 
convictions  which  I  have  long  held  and  express- 
ing them  in  a  manner  and  with  a  charm  which 
any  man  might  well  be  proud  to  equal.  I  had 
read  some  of  these  chapters  already  in  the 
Atlantic.  They  make  a  fine  cumulative  effect 
thus  collected,  Mr.  Yeomans,  we  are  told,  is 
"a  Chicago  manufacturer  of  steam  pumps,  who 
enjoys  playing  the  cello,  sailing  a  boat  along  the 
New  England  coast  in  summer  and  passing  the 
winter  in  California."  But  all  this  only  partly 
describes  him.  Mr.  Yeomans  is  a  man  with  an 
eye  for  the  significance  of  beauty,  with  a  heart 
tender  to  the  children  on  whom  the  absurdities 

187 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

of  our  educational  system  heap  many  indignities, 
with  a  large  apprehension  of  the  greater  things 
of  life.    I  take  my  hat  off  to  this  book. 

Mr.  Yeomans,  In  discussing  schools  in  gen- 
eral, declares  that  much  of  our  human  society  "is 
still  immersed  in  neolithic  thought"  and  asks 
pertinently  "what  the  proportion  of  discrimin- 
ating and  intelligent  people  Is,  who  knows  .^" 
At  the  outset  he  recognizes  two  classes,  "practi- 
cal people  whose  mental  structure  is  mechanical, 
*  *  *  exploiters  of  men  since  all  eternity," 
and  "the  emotional,  the  poetic,  the  artistic,  the 
lovers  of  beauty  and  the  distributors  of  a  pecu- 
liar happiness."  Boards  of  education,  whether 
of  college  or  school,  seldom  belong  to  the  latter 
class,  and  superintendents  and  teachers — except 
for  the  few  of  the  latter  who  escape — are  herded 
along  by  the  kind  which  chooses  them.  It  is  the 
mechanical  group  which  is  at  present  exploiting 
education  and  the  momentary  enthusiasm  Is 
charts.  Intelligence  tests  and  percentages.  Per- 
haps the  next  enthusiasm  will  be  time  clocks. 
Mr.  Edison,  we  are  told,  conforms  his  labors  to 
one.  Much  to  the  scandal  of  schools  of  pedagogy, 
Mr.  Yeomans  believes  that  a  teacher  is  born,  not 
manufactured,  and  should  be  taken,  even  un- 
certificated, when  found,  as  a  rare  product.  He 
has  the  audacity  to  doubt  if  a  teacher  can  be 
turned  out  by  means  of  courses  in  how  to  do  it. 

i88 


A  BREATH  OF  FRESH  AIR  ON  EDUCATION 

He  even  believes  that  "the  life  of  a  teacher  may 
easily  disqualify  him  to  teach"  and  that  infor- 
mation is  the  least  important  feature  of  educa- 
tion— pace  Mr.  Edison — when  all  has  been  said. 

"This  is  rank  educational  bolshevism!"  I  hear 
the  professor  of  class  discipline  exclaim  to  the 
superintendent  of  manual  dexterity.  "It  is 
awful  to  think  that  there  are  such  people  outside 
of  Russia,  just  as  we  had  got  everything  into 
apple-pie  order,  everything  nicely  graded,  a 
certified  teacher  in  every  class,"  not  one  of  them, 
we  may  add,  not  properly  vaccinated  with  the 
virus  of  pedagogic  training. 

Valiant  is  Mr.  Yeomans'  attack  upon  the 
idea,  only  too  prevalent,  that  "the  Way,  the 
Truth  and  the  Life  are  along  a  road  that  leads  to 
recognition."  In  our  colloquial  phrase,  "Am- 
bition is  the  vice  of  noble  minds. "  And  we  lay  a 
stronger  emphasis  on  the  nobility  than  on  the 
vice.  Here  in  America  we  have  come  to  consider 
life  as  a  great  game  in  which  it  is  decent,  of 
course,  to  observe  the  rules,  but  the  object  of 
which,  after  all,  is  to  win.  There  is  some  good 
reading  on  this  topic  in  this  book.  The  author 
acknowledges  the  value  of  the  game  in  main- 
taining morale,  but  confesses  that  the  English 
sense  of  the  game  and  ours  give  us  a  relish  and  a 
safety  valve,  so  to  speak,  that  makes  for  clean- 
ness and  health.    But  he  adds,  "The  tendency  to 

189 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

surrender  too  much  to  group-loyalty,  and  to 
idolize  victory  and  aggressiveness  generally,  is 
always  present  and  often  overshadowing.  People 
*  determined  to  win'  are  hardly  more  wholesome 
than  people  unable  to  win,  because  in  winning 
they  usually  lose  more  than  they  gain."  The 
temptation  to  quote  Mr.  Yeomans  in  his  perti- 
nent and  telling  phrases  is  overpowering.  His 
idiomatic  sentences  need  no  explication  and  can- 
not be  paraphrased  with  any  saving  of  words. 
With  a  world  of  wonder  and  romance  about  us, 
with  nature  in  a  thousand  silent  voices  calling  on 
us  for  a  closer  acquaintance,  it  seems  shocking 
that  man  must  herd  under  awnings  and  pro- 
menade on  asphalt.  Mr.  Yeomans  is  a  devotee 
of  the  out-door  life,  esteeming  the  naturalist  the 
happiest  of  men.  In  two  capital  anecdotes 
which  have  the  marks  of  actual  experience  upon 
them  he  tells  of  the  paltry  little  schoolmarm  who 
"taught  geography,  the  geography  of  informa- 
tion," at  a  thousand  a  year,  but  knew  not  the 
alphabet  of  "the  geography  of  inspiration." 
The  other  story  is  of  an  astronomer  who  startled 
his  superintendent  as  well  as  a  book  agent  by 
asking  for  a  telescope  with  which  to  show  the 
children  the  stars;  not  diagrams  and  ingenious 
textbooks,  written  for  two  bad  purposes — to  sell 
new,  but  to  teach  at  second  hand. 

190 


A  BREATH  OF  FRESH  AIR  ON  EDUCATION 

With  so  much  that  is  good,  it  is  difficult  to 
pick  and  choose.  Instances  of  Mr.  Yeomans' 
felicity  of  phrase  are  these.  Society's  only  ap- 
plause for  a  man,  he  tells  us,  is  "when  he  is  seen 
running,  like  a  tired  dog,  under  a  vehicle  called  a 
career."  Or  his  remark  concerning  a  "rather 
metallic"  teacher  of  English,  "just  juggling  Eng- 
lish words. "  In  that  classroom  "  nothing  alive  is 
ever  exposed. "  And  he  adds :  "  If  you  have  not 
a  lion  concealed  about  your  person,  dear  teacher, 
haven't  you  at  least  a  rabbit.'"'  An  eloquent 
passage  on  this  maligned  and  beautiful  world  of 
ours  ends:  "Steamers  and  trains  poke  painfully 
along  like  insects  in  high  grass.  In  little  spots, 
illumined  by  electricity  and  smudged  with  smoke 
there  is  a  rather  repulsive  swarming  of  otherwise 
invisible  human  beings." 

Among  the  many  independent  ideas  which 
make  up  the  all  too  brief  pages  of  this  book  there 
seems  to  me  none  so  suggestive  as  the  chapter 
entitled  "Cross-fertilization."  Taking  the  ways 
of  plant  life  in  this  regard,  Mr.  Yeomans  asks 
why  men  may  not  profit  by  the  example  of 
nature.  Shut  up  each  class  within  itself,  we 
tend  to  the  perpetuation  of  our  own  limitations 
within  our  own  species.  The  upper  class  estab- 
lished in  its  family,  its  social  group,  knows  only 
its  like.  With  children  before  sophistication's 
winged  feet  overtake  them,  there    is    no    such 

191 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

barrier  as  a  little  more  wealth  or  a  grade  more 
luxury.  And  so  between  the  middle  and  the 
lower  classes.  In  fine  scorn  Mr.  Yeomans  tells  of 
an  old  man  who  could  conceive  in  his  mind  and 
build  to  completion  a  schooner,  trim  and  cap- 
able, a  thing  of  beauty,  a  mastery  of  the  elements. 
And  such  a  man  is  patronized  as  a  laboring  man 
by  bank  clerks  and  salesmen!  It  is  one  of  the 
advantages  of  a  sojourn  in  the  country — the  real 
country,  not  toy-shop  suburbs — that  you  can 
meet  there  on  terms  of  equality  the  man  who 
toils  with  his  hands  and  lives  with  nature.  It  is 
a  beautiful  thought,  this  of  human  cross-fer- 
tilization; the  most  ideal,  the  most  liberal,  the 
most  democratic  which  I  have  come  across  for 
many  a  day. 


PROFESSOR     SANTAYANA    ON 
AMERICAN  OPINION 

THIS  book  was  originally  addressed,  we  are 
informed,  to  British  audiences  in  the  form 
of  lectures.  But  the  subject,  American  life  in 
its  academic  and  intellectual  phases,  especially 
at  Harvard,  is  even  more  immediately  interesting 
to  us  who  are  of  American  birth.  Professor  San- 
tayana  possesses  two  advantages  for  his  task, 
unusual  in  their  combination,  and  these  are  his 
foreign  blood  and  secondly  his  American  aca- 
demic associations.  Born  a  Spaniard,  Mr. 
Santayana  was  educated  at  Harvard  and  pro- 
fessed philosophy  there  for  more  than  twenty 
years.  Wherefore  he  is  able  alike  to  know,  to 
sympathize,  even  at  times  to  admire,  and  yet  to 
view  American,  or  at  least  New  England  char- 
acter and  philosophical  opinion,  from  the  van- 
tage of  a  detached  observer.  In  his  preface  he 
very  aptly  observes  that  such  a  work  can  hardly 
claim  for  itself  truth  because  it  enables  us  "to 
see  ourselves  as  others  see  us, "  for  in  such  cases  it 
is  the  observer  often  who  is  better  disclosed  than 
the  thing  seen.  And  yet  it  is  always  an  approxi- 
mation at  least  to  a  better  understanding  of  the 
realities  to  have  them  honestly  and  dispassion- 
ately discussed  by  one  who  combines  a  know- 
ledge of  the  subject  with  a  clear  perception  of  its 

193 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

relations  and  the  radical  detachment  of  essen- 
tially alien  blood. 

To  the  sanguine  American  spirit  which  is  so 
passionately  attached  to  the  faith  that  rapid  and 
continuous  betterment  is  one  of  the  certainties  of 
human  development,  it  will  come  as  something 
of  a  shock  to  hear  that  "civilization  is  perhaps 
approaching  one  of  those  long  winters  that  over- 
take it  from  time  to  time.  A  flood  of  barbarism 
from  below  may  soon  level  all  the  fair  works  of 
our  Christian  ancestors,  as  another  flood  two 
thousand  years  ago  leveled  those  of  the  an- 
cients." And  yet  Mr.  Santayana  is  far  from 
hopeless  as  to  the  future;  on  the  contrary  he  is 
full  of  illumination  and  recognition  for  the  essen- 
tial idealism  of  American  character.  While  I 
doubt  not  that  to  the  seasoned  philosophic  mind 
the  gist  of  this  book  will  be  found  in  the  fine 
chapters  of  anah^sis  of  the  philosophies  of  the 
two  notable  Harvard  philosophers,  with  both 
of  whom  the  author  was  intimately  associated,  to 
the  general  reader  and  the  journeyman  reviewer 
it  is  the  prospects,  so  to  speak,  by  the  way  which 
allure.  What  could  be  a  finer  tribute  to  liberality, 
for  example,  than  this  on  William  James? 
"Nobody  ever  recognized  more  heartily  the 
chance  that  others  had  of  being  right,  and  the 
right  they  had  of  being  different."  Or  what 
shrewder  observation  could  we  have  than  this  on 

194 


SANTAYANA  ON  AMERICAN  OPINION 

the  associations  of  Josiah  Royce  with  certain 
good  folks  whom  we  know  are  addicted  to  ad- 
vanced thinking?  "On  current  affairs  his  judg- 
ments were  highly  seasoned  and  laboriously 
wise  *  *  *  His  reward  was  that  he  became  a 
prophet  to  a  whole  class  of  earnest  troubled 
people,  who,  having  discarded  doctrinal  religion, 
wished  to  think  their  life  worth  living,  when,  to 
look  at  what  it  contained,  it  m.ight  not  have 
seemed  so."  Mr.  Santayana  is  often  thus  keen 
on  the  subconscious  relations  of  the  bed  rock  of 
the  Puritan  spirit  to  the  discard  of  its  forms. 
Wider  in  its  reach  is  the  observation  that  "hardly 
anybody,  except  the  Greeks  at  their  best,  has 
realized  the  sweetness  and  glory  of  being  a  ra- 
tional animal,"  and  the  recognition  that  out  of 
the  Hebraic  idea  of  themselves  as  God's  chosen 
people  has  arisen  "that  terrible  interest  in  ma- 
terial existence,"  in  material  splendor  which  still 
haunts  much  of  our  Christian  thinking  as  to  the 
world  to  come.  However,  the  author  admits  that 
"some  detachment  from  existence  and  from  the 
hopes  of  material  splendor  has  indeed  filtered 
into  Christianity  through  Platonism. " 

Perhaps  the  reader  does  not  feel  out  of  his 
depth,  or  will  not  confess  it.  His  reviewer  is 
sputtering.  Let  us  get  back  to  the  shore.  In 
his  chapter  on  academic  environment,  Mr. 
Santayana  sets  forth  the  difficulties  of  a  philos- 

195 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

opher — he  might  have  added  of  any  investi- 
gating scholar — in  combining  pure  speculation 
with  that  "delightful  paternal  art,"  teaching. 
And  he  likens  the  latter  to  acting  "where  the 
performance  often  rehearsed,  must  be  adapted 
to  an  audience  hearing  it  only  once. "  There  is  a 
further  difficulty  for  the  teacher,  a  further  re- 
sponsibility to  his  students,  "he  must  neither 
bore,  nor  perplex  nor  demoralize  them. "  It  is  a 
just  observation  that  "while  the  sentiments  of 
most  Americans  in  politics  and  morals,  if  a  little 
vague,  are  very  constructive,  the  democratic 
instincts  have  produced  a  system  of  education 
which  anticipates  all  that  the  most  extreme  re- 
volution could  bring  about. "  The  author  finds 
in  the  preponderance  of  women  among  teachers 
of  the  young,  in  ambitious,  easy  and  optional 
lessons,  "divided  between  what  the  child  likes 
now  and  what  he  is  going  to  need  in  his  trade  or 
profession"  the  ever-increasing  gulf  between  the 
intellectual  and  the  practical  life.  Wherefore  "a 
gentle  contempt"  on  the  part  of  the  young 
American  for  the  past  and  a  kindly  regret  for  the 
poor  old  fellows  who  had  no  chance  to  live  in  our 
incomparable  age.  Wherefore,  likewise,  Amer- 
ican intelligence  is  largely  absorbed  in  what  is  not 
intellectual,  father  finding  his  recourse  in  busi- 
ness, the  women  and  children  in  various  forms  of 
frivolity  and  play.    It  is  in  this  cleavage  that  our 

196 


SANTAYANA  ON  AMERICAN  OPINION 

want  of  any  real  society  really  lies;  for  such 
society  as  we  have  is  distinctly  unintellectual 
and  frivolous,  while  our  intellectuality  in  its  asso- 
ciations remains  quasi-professional  and  unsocial. 
To  return  to  education,  Mr.  Santayana  aptly 
remarks  that  anything  might  have  been  taught 
in  the  liberal  curriculum  of  the  Harvard  of  his 
day.  "You  might  almost  be  an  atheist,  if  you 
were  troubled  enough  about  it. "  Still,  a  certain 
sense  of  duty. and  decorum  reigned  over  all  and, 
he  wittily  concludes,  "a  slight  smell  of  brimstone 
lingered  in  the  air. " 

Mr.  Santayana's  last  chapter  is  entitled 
"English  Liberty  in  America,"  and  in  it  he  pays 
a  fine  tribute  to  the  "eminence  in  temper,  good 
will,  reliability,  accommodation"  in  which  alone 
can  we  hope  for  the  development  of  a  real  de- 
mocracy. To  dominate  the  world  by  co-oper- 
ation is  better  than  to  dominate  it  by  conquest; 
experiment  in  government  is  safer  and  likely  to 
prove  in  the  end  more  efficient  than  government 
by  inspiration.  "Free  government,"  the  author 
tells  us  elsewhere,  "works  well  in  proportion  as 
government  is  superfluous."  "In  America  there 
is  but  one  way  of  being  saved,  though  it  is  not 
peculiar  to  any  of  the  official  religions  which 
themselves  must  silently  conform  to  the  national 
orthodoxy  or  else  themselves  become  impotent 
and   merely   ornamental.     This    national    faith 

197 


APPRAISEMENTS  AND  ASPERITIES 

and  morality  are  vague  in  idea,  but  inejcorable  in 
spirit;  they  are  the  gospel  of  work  and  the  belief- 
in  progress.  *  *  *  American  life  is  free  as  a 
whole,  because  it  is  mobile  *  *  *  In  temper 
America  is  docile  and  not  at  all  tyrannical;  it  has 
not  predetermined  its  career,  and  its  merciless 
momentum  is  a  passive  resultant. "  "Certainly 
absolute  freedom,"  he  concludes,  "would  be 
more  beautiful  if  we  were  birds  or  poets;  but 
co-operation  and  a  loving  sacrifice  of  a  part  of 
ourselves^or  even  of  the  whole  save  the  love  in 
us — are  beautiful,  too,  if  we  are  men  living  to- 
gether." I  make  no  apology  for  quoting  thus 
frequently  from  this  suggestive,  this  sound  and 
sweet-tempered  book.  Where  thought  it  so  com- 
pletely and  yet  unsuperfluously  clothed  in  the 
raiment  of  apt  words  there  is  no  other  way.  Mr. 
Santayana's  style  is  as  attractive  as  his  ideas  are 
stimulating  and  allaying. 


LIST  OF  BOOKS  REVIEWED 

E.  V.  Lucas,  "Adventures  and  Enthusiasms." 

Mrs.  R.  Clipston  Sturgis,  "Personal  Prejudices." 

Agnes  Repplier," Points  of  Friction." 

Winifred  Kirkland,  "The  View  Vertical." 

Samuel   McChord    Crothers,    "The   Dame   School   of 

.    Experience." 

Douglas  Goldring,  "  Reputations,  Essays  in  Criticism. " 

Edwin  W.  AIorse,   "Life  and  Letters  of  Hamilton  W. 

Mabie." 
William  Roscoe  Thayer,  "The  Art  of  Biography." 
Rose  Macaulay,  "Potterism." 
Joseph  Conrad,  "Notes  on  Life  and  Letters." 
E.  W.  Howe,  "The  Anthology  of  Another  Town." 
Carl  Sandburg,  "Smoke  and  Steel." 
Alfred  Noyes,  "Collected  Poems,"  Volume  III. 
John  Masefield,  "Right  Royal," 

"Enslaved  and  Other  Poems." 
Edwin  Arlington  Robinson,  "Lancelot,  a  Poem." 
George  E.Woodberry,  "The  Roamer  and  Other  Poems." 
George  P.  Baker,  "Modern  American  Plays." 
John  Drinkwater,  "Mary  Stuart,  a  Play." 
GiLDA  Veresi,  "Enter  Madame,  a  Comedy." 
Odin  Gregory,  "Caius  Gracchus." 
Sacha    Guitry,    "Deburau,     a    Comedy,  translated   by 

Grenville  Parker." 
Romain  Rolland,  "Liluli,  a  Farce." 
Michael  Strange,  "Clair  de  Lune,  a  Play." 

199 


LIST  OF  BOOKS  REVIEWED 

Eugene  O'Neill,  "The  Emperor  Jones." 

George  C.  D.  Odell,  "Shakespeare  from  Betterton  to 

Irving." 
Paul  Elmer  More,  "A  New  England  Group  and  Others." 
Robert  Lynd,  "The  Art  of  Letters." 
Henry  James,  "Master  Eustace." 
Mary  Austen-Leigh,  "  Personal  Aspects  of  Jane  Austen. " 
John  Tyler,  "The  New  Stone  Age  in  Northern  Europe." 
Edward  Yeomans,  "Shackled  Youth." 
George   Santa yana,    "Character   and    Opinion    in    the 

United  States." 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

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